CHAPTER V THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Hitherto we have been discussing the institution called the State, especially in relation to the fact of war. We have tried to establish the position that war as a defensive measure for the protection of the rights of its citizens is one of the essential functions of the State. It arises from the necessity for the maintenance of a moral order within its territory, on the basis of which the national life is to proceed. We have also examined briefly the doctrine of the State and of war which has been promulgated by the limitless ambition and the uneasy conscience of German leaders. The program which they describe would result, we believe, in the destruction of all morality within any nation which deliberately and thoroughly adopts it. And if it were made the program of all nations and carried out over the face of the earth, it would create a condition from the very imagination of which heart and mind must shrink back in amazement and horror. 1. There is another institution in the world, the Church of Christ, with whose nature and influence we must now reckon; for we cannot understand the life of a community without understanding its religion, and throughout Christendom religion depends upon the existence and work of the Church. In early times religion was looked upon simply as one phase of the life of the community, as a whole, one function of the State. The chief of a tribe was very often its priest. Only with the fuller development of the life of a people has a distinction been drawn between the organization of the people for religious ends and their organization for temporal and secular ends.1 When Jesus began His ministry, the Jewish people existed mainly as a Church, while the functions of the State rested in the representatives of imperial Rome. The political situation in Palestine was extremely complicated. There were four main political sections: first the Roman authorities, second the party of the Sadducees, third the party of the Pharisees, fourth the party of the Herodians. At every point the principles on which Jesus founded His own policy came into competition with the principles or policy of one or other of these parties. His principles laid an emphasis on individuality, on the infinite value of each human personality, which has proved itself one of the deepest forces 1 The progress of this development is best illustrated in the history of Israel from Moses to the death of Christ. in the creation of the modern, the Christian world. But in His ministry He was not dealing, as we too often suppose, merely with individuals, irrespective of their social and political environment. He was deliberately creating a new community, whose nature would bring it into contact with every other human institution. The Church of Christ was not founded and did not come into full consciousness as a distinctive community until after His death and resurrection. Without these events it cannot be conceived to exist. They are among the primary forces which produced it, and their permanent power is one of the vital conditions of its continued existence. When the Church did come into conscious being as a distinct community, it became speedily identified as a new and mighty fact in human history. Roman statesmen ere long saw in it a foe more subtle than any which they had ever encountered, an institution whose very nature made it, as history has proved, invincible before even the breadth and force of Roman statesmanship. 2. We may briefly define the Church for our present purpose as that community of human beings of all races and classes who are brought together by reason of their ardent faith in Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord, and whose lives are spent in obedience to His law in the practical manifestation of His spirit of universal love. Two of the great characteristics of this community, which we may name as relevant to our present task, are that in its essence it is unworldly and international or inter-racial. By the former we mean not merely that its source is spiritual, but that the whole meaning of its existence is to be found in the moral and spiritual sphere. It may possess buildings, but it does not exist for them and can exist without them. Its continued life may be nourished by the variety of its institutional arrangements and its influence upon humanity enlarged by them, but if these institutions bring it into the exercise of merely earthly policies and the pursuit of earthly gains, its spirit is wronged, its reality is brought into doubt. It is international in the sense that it draws its members on equal terms from literally all classes of human beings, and seeks to bring them into a conscious fellowship with one another which cannot be equaled by any other institution, not even by the State. These facts do not mean that it has no relation with the actual world. Rather is it true that the more intensely it realizes its spiritual nature and pursues its spiritual ends, the more powerfully does it produce its characteristic and ennobling effect upon human life. As a distinct social community it necessarily comes into comparison and contact with other social institutions. It has interacted with them from the beginning of its history to this |