Chapter III
The Antiquity or Eternity of That Plan
And, Therefore, Its Absolute Inviolability, i.e., Its Exclusion of, and Freedom from, All Human or Even Angelic Interference
The foundation was laid on a certain day, and at a certain hour of time; but the design of which it was the part fulfilment was from eternity—was as old as the Divine mind in which it had found a place, the mind of Him who is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. Hence, it was clearly beyond the reach of human and even angelic influence. The selection of that foundation was the Redeemer’s own independent act. He had held no consultation with His Apostles beforehand as to the choice He was going to make. He had not invited any human opinions or suggestions about the matter. It was Cæsarea Philippi, a city not far from the sea of Tiberias, that was destined to hear the Divine declaration which proclaimed the approach of this momentous event.
On a day ever memorable and ever to be thought of with solemn veneration and boundless gratitude by all Christians, Christ promised the foundation of His Church. He spoke the words which have since then moved the world of succeeding generations. “Thou art Peter; and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” These words were not words of impulse; they were words spoken with even Divine deliberation. To say that they were the result of sudden exultation, caused by the prompt and fearless profession of Peter’s faith, would be to lower the Godhead, to disparage it; nay, it would be to go to the verge of blasphemy. The great and solemn occasion on which they were uttered had been long foreseen and as long arranged for. The words were few in number, but they were emphatic, and full of that deep meaning and Divine efficacy which infinite wisdom and Almighty power alone could give them. Their far-reaching effect was to be felt not only on earth but in heaven also, and in hell as well. What tongue of man or of angel could tell the fruits, the multitudinous, the marvellous, the miraculous fruits of which they were the seed? The words were, we repeat, notably brief; but each one of them might be truly said to be equal to a volume. “On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Let us look into His intentions in the light in which this solemn saying expresses them. Mark the personal pronoun “I”.1 Mark the possessive pronoun “My,” and mark, moreover, the striking phrase which follows—“and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. All these items call for particular attention. He would have it understood beyond all manner of doubt that He Himself alone was to give the design of the structure which was to rest on that unyielding rock. The Apostles and their lawful successors would be the men chosen to raise the external building, but in doing their work they would be following a Divine pattern, not a human one. The whole edifice was to rise into its mature proportions throughout its length, breadth and height on the lines which He had foreseen before the world existed. That edifice would occupy, would require the whole of the foundation. There would not and could not be room for another, even though that other were dissimilar only in a degree that to the natural eye was hardly perceptible, much less for one that was entirely and absolutely different or that was hiddenly a counterfeit. He Himself who had been the architect of the material universe in which man was to dwell for a time, was also to be the architect of the sacred structure in which man’s immortal soul was to be saved for eternity. Nay, the unfailing and invincible nature of that hallowed fabric demanded that only a Divine Person should design it, for it was to be fashioned in such manner as to be proof, according to His promise, not only against the assaults of the powers of earth, but against those of the powers of hell. More than this, it was to be a habitation, as will be shown later, wherein He Himself and His Divine Spirit would condescend to dwell, by a special abiding presence,—a presence of predilection, not temporarily, but unremittingly for ever. And no hands, save Divine ones, could build an abode that would answer objects so far beyond the reach of all human effort. Intelligence which was merely human or at most angelic, could never either design or frame a building that would be worthy to rest on a foundation laid by Divine wisdom and made immovable by Divine power. To attempt to place such a structure on the rock established by Him who was the Incarnate Son of God, would be like trying to build the waves of the sea on the cliff’s of the beach, or to force a cloud into the interior of the sun.
But let us suppose, for argument sake, that once He had laid the foundation, He had no further distinct ideal in connection with it, i.e., that He had not before Him any definite exemplar in conformity with which the superstructure was to be raised; that He willed and decreed in His Divine condescension to leave that an entirely open question; and that He gave it to be understood that He would be equally satisfied whatever shape that superstructure might assume as to doctrine, worship, government, sacraments—the inference would be so clear as to hardly need expression. It would follow that He left, and meant to leave, not merely nations, but even every man and woman of each country’s population, free to mould it into whatever form he or she might think most suitable, most agreeable, and most convenient. For, if there was no preconceived ideal, which sprang from the fountain of His infinite wisdom, and according to which it was to be built up, then not only kingdoms and provinces, but even the most isolated individuals could use their judgment and make it square in every respect with their feelings and fancies, however eccentric and foolish these fancies might be. To maintain that He decreed to permit such latitude would be to maintain that He never meant to establish any Church with fixed organisation at all. And if this is to be granted, then neither the Roman Catholic communion as such, nor the Anglican communion as such, nor the Greek, the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Presbyterian communions as such, can have any special claim to be considered His Church, since on such a supposition He never intended to approve the various organisations which these different communions represent, more than other organisations which nations and even individuals might invent at will or capriciously change at any moment. It is true that if we were to judge by the multiplicity of the conflicting creeds which at present fill the length and breadth of Christendom with the loud assertion of their respective claims, we should be forced to the conclusion that He really did leave the building-up an entirely open question. For innovators, heresiarchs, leaders of schism have been accustomed to use as much freedom in formulating new systems of religion, as if there were no limits to the licence that was allowed in that direction, and no fixed principle to restrain their conscience so far as Church inventing and creed manufacturing was concerned.
How far such latitude, such unlimited comprehensiveness was removed from the mind of Him who gave His Church to be the light of the world, will we hope, become clear by the following considerations.
When He was so strikingly definite in the choice of the groundwork, He could not be less so about the nature of the building which was to rest upon it. If He were, He attached more importance to the one than to the other, and yet, it must be conceded, that both, in His eyes, were equally important parts of one great whole. As He had allowed no opinions or suggestions in reference to the foundation, neither would He tolerate any in reference to the building it was to bear. To have done so would have been to lift man’s judgment to a level with His own, to put human opinions on an equality with Divine wisdom.
To see this in its clearest light, we must look again into the nature of the great commission given to the Apostles. He said: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”. In this solemn delegation He not only commissioned the Apostles to teach the nations the revelation which they had heard from Himself, and which the Divine Spirit of Pentecost would make known to them in more minute detail, but He commissioned them also to frame a Church in His name, which would continue to teach the same revelation, when they themselves had passed away. Either this must be granted or Christianity fails.
But if He commissioned them to frame a Church, He meant them to frame it according to His ideas, not according to their own. In building it up stone upon stone on the foundation which had been already laid, they were to follow strictly His design, not their own private fancies. No individual Apostle was to attempt to give it a form or colour that sprang from his own personal tastes, notions, inclinations. No Apostle was to claim the privilege of setting up, in some particular region, a Church dissimilar to the one which his brother Apostle had established elsewhere in conformity with the Divine original. Those who were to preach her creed in the West were not free to make that creed look different from what it had been made appear by those who had preached it in the East; much less to make it to be different in substance. From Palestine to Britain, from zone to zone, from pole to pole, the same plan was to be followed throughout, and the same Church realised in practice. Though thousands of miles of land and sea were to separate them during their glorious apostolate, though they were to preach in diverse languages to diverse races, yet they were to be of one mind, one heart, one soul and one voice, so far as the one Church of their Divine Master was concerned. No latitude was allowed. Comprehensiveness, in the sense in which it has been used of late, had no place in the commission which they had received. Not even the most privileged amongst them was to have any authority in the direction of change, addition or diminution.2
St. John the Evangelist, although he had been styled by pre-eminence the beloved disciple, although he had been the object of so many special favours, although he had enjoyed the ineffable privilege of reclining on the bosom of the Divine Master, and was to be the special evangelist of His Divinity, although in the visions of Patmos the heavens were to be opened before him and heaven’s hierarchies were to be unfolded to his eyes, yet he had no personal power to make suggestions about the essential structure of the Church. St. James, who was one of the favoured three who witnessed the dazzling splendours of the Transfiguration, and beheld the robes of the Saviour steeped in the overpowering light of the Divinity, had no authority to interfere. No! nor even St. Peter, although he was the prince of the Apostolic college, although the keys of the eternal kingdom were to be in his hands, although he was to be the rock on which that Church was to rest, yet even he had no power whatever to influence the plan of her construction.
Neither men nor even angels could have any more share in that heaven-born ideal than they could have in the workings of the all-wise Providence which guides the course of the universe. It can never be the privilege of the creature whose range of mind is necessarily limited to dictate, or even to suggest, to the Creator, whose wisdom knows no bounds. No creature can presume to force the Infinite to depart from an arrangement which is Divine, and consequently infallible, to follow one which is human, and therefore liable to be full of error and falsehood.
The Divine exemplar of the Church was the reflex of a Divine mind, and was to be as free of all mundane interference as the plan of Redemption. Hence they (the Apostles) durst not change it, mutilate it, increase it, or diminish it; durst not even touch it with the finger of innovation. It is to this inviolable immunity from human interference that St. Paul alludes in his epistle to the Galatians: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach to you a gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.”3 Their sole duty was to carry it faithfully into execution. Their authorisation did not and could not extend further. So had it been always; so was it ever to be. It was to be in the New Dispensation as it had been in the Old. And there was no human element in the message delivered from on high in the olden time.
Moses had no part in framing the Ten Commandments which were delivered to him by the hands of the Lord amid the miraculous manifestations of Mount Sinai; nor had he any share in drawing out the plan of the Ark and the Tabernacle, which were to symbolise the essence of the worship which his people were to give to their Creator till the fulness of time would come. The God in whose awful presence he stood, but whose face was veiled from him throughout that hallowed interview, had brought down those immutable precepts of moral law and that design for eternal worship from high heaven. Those precepts and that ritual of religion had been in the mind of the Lord long before Moses had become leader of His chosen people, long before Moses had seen the light of time, nay, from eternity. And the highest and heaviest responsibility of that great law-giver was to promulgate the revelation which had been thus Divinely made known to him.
His work was simple, definite and easy; it was sharply cut out for him. The commandments which he was to make known were engraved on stone by the writing of an Omnipotent hand. The shape, the material and the decorations of the Tabernacle and Ark were described by the Divine voice with a definiteness and precision which could not be mistaken. And he was charged in the most solemn manner by the Almighty voice to keep strictly to the directions which had been given him.
He had no authorisation, expressed or implied, to follow the phantoms of his imagination or the dictates of his individual opinion. He was not told that he might, if he chose, smooth down those moral precepts and modify or change the form of worship according to the personal inclinations of privileged individuals; or according to the political interests of his people in their intercourse with other nations in time of peace or time of war. Whether the people were to be ruled by a law-giver like himself, or by a judge like Samuel, or by kings like Saul, David or Solomon, whatever form of government they were to be under, such was to be their code of Divine law then and for ever; and not only for them, but for all believing nations to the end of time. Such, too, was to be their ritual of religious observance until that Lord Himself should come, who was to change shadows into substance, types into reality, and in whom prophecies were to receive their final fulfilment.
And when the fulness of time had arrived, that same Lord came down from heaven, not amid clouds of smoke and the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning. He came with silent step and in humble garb; became Incarnate in a virgin’s womb, was born into the world in the form of mortal man, passed through the slow and tedious years of childhood, reached manhood, suffered, bled, died and rose again.
And, before His Ascension, He appeared on another mountain, not Sinai, but a mountain of Galilee; not the mountain of the Old Testament, but the mountain of the New. He appeared there to command the promulgation of an additional revelation, not to one particular nation and people, but to all nations and all peoples; not to a portion of the world, but to the whole world; not for a period, but for all time. Yes; He was there to deliver an additional revelation of doctrine, an additional code of law, and to establish a new species of worship. He was there to proclaim the beginning of the building up of the teaching Institution by which His Gospel was to resound in the ears of the nations to the consummation of the world.
The plan of that Institution had been in His mind before He appeared on that mountain, before His Crucifixion, before His Incarnation, nay, from the beginning. Like that of Sinai, it came down with Him from the bosom of the Eternal Father. And its unbeginning antiquity surely ought to be guarantee sufficient against the lawfulness of human innovation.
Such was the eternal ideal of the Church founded to teach the truth which He was born and came into the world to give testimony to.
Either this must be granted or His Divinity is denied, and the whole fabric of Christianity falls to pieces.
