biblical associations, implies the gift of general supervision as exercised by kings and magistrates rather than that of teaching and of prayer alone; and his address closes, not with an exhortation about prayer and preaching, but with the commendation to them of a disinterestedness like his own as to money matters 1, and an exhortation to remember that the duty of Christians is to labour and support the weak, and to impart freely to others. In the Pastoral Epistles the normal duty of the elders is to rule: those who rule well are to have double honours 2; those who add to this the less common function of teaching are specially to be honoured. The Elder or Bishop must be apt to teach, but still more apt to rule3. The qualities required of him—vigilance, sobriety, hospitality, disinterestedness, experience, the capacity to rule as tested by ruling his own family-attest the governor rather than the preacher or the liturgist. As to teaching and public prayer, every index points to its being free, under the general rule that all should be done decently and in order. In the synagogue the function of teaching was confined to no special class: the ruler of the synagogue invited any competent man to address those assembled, and the Church, no doubt, adopted this custom. In Jerusalem the Apostles chose these functions as the most important, whether intrinsically or for the time, for themselves 4. But there is nothing to limit these functions to the Apostolic office. The Deacons, though appointed to serve 1 Acts xx. 33-3519-22. 21 Tim. v. 17. Id. iii. 2-7. Titus i. 7, 8. 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, + Acts vi. 4. tables, at once began to teach, some of them with eminent publicity and independence1. Those who were scattered abroad, in the persecution that arose about Stephen, went everywhere preaching the Word, even to Antioch 3, where the Apostles would have greatly hesitated to send them, and began spontaneously to preach to the Gentiles. Later, in the Corinthian Church, every man had a psalm, or a doctrine, or an interpretation; and there is no suggestion by St. Paul when he took order in this matter, that teaching and prayer belong to a particular class. Even as late as the Pastoral Epistles, when the Presbyterate is fully formed, the writer's direction is only that men should lead in prayer, and that no woman should teach in the public assemblies 5. It was only by degrees, as reflexion brought doctrinal differences, and increasing numbers required stricter order, that these duties were confined to a particular class, and that Bishops first, then Presbyters, and later even Deacons, came to be occupied mainly or solely with prayer and teaching. It would seem that it was long before this change occurred. The Parochial system was formed; not on the basis of teaching and worship, but on that of government. The superintendent of a parish, in the beginning of the fifth century, was called not Doctor but Rector 7. This ruling function had a constantly widening field See the account of the formation and changes of these offices in Dr. Hatch's Bampton Lectures, and the note at p. 160 of this volume. 7 See Sulpicius Severus, Dial. i. 4. Ecclesiam illius loci (Bethlehem) Hieronymus Presbyter regit. of exercise even in the Apostolic times. In the Pastoral Epistles, we read no longer of a small and poor community, but one in which various classes exist, in which many are wealthy, in which also there are various orders of officers, not only Presbyters or Bishops and Deacons, but orders of women Deacons1 and widows. The exercise of discipline has become a vast labour, comparable to that of Moses and the elders of Israel at Mount Sinai. The Apostolic deputy, Timothy or Titus, is sent not merely to regulate worship or teaching, but to take order in the affairs of the community generally 2. And if the sentiment of St. Paul, that it was a shame for the infant Church to bring its matters before the heathen tribunals, was generally adopted, we can understand that the rulers of the Christian community had a large sphere of labour traced out for them. If we ask by what law such matters were decided, we may well suppose that the Christian spirit of itself suggested the principles of all true government, and that, as with the judges of Israel, judgment was with the Christian elders mainly a spiritual faculty. But it is of the nature of legal procedure to become fixed, and to appeal to rule and precedent. Some such rules we find laid down in the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Pastoral Epistles, such as the directions concerning mixed marriages in the Epistle to the Corinthians, or those concerning the marriage of presbyters and deacons, 1 1 Tim. v. 9, 10; iii. 11. It is possible that yʊvaîkas in this passage ought to be translated (as by the Revisers) merely 'women.' But it seems more likely that some special women are meant, and that they were Deaconesses, the passage before and after having reference to servants of the church. 2 1 Tim. i. 3, &c., &c. Titus i. 5. 4 I Cor. vii. 12-16. and the admission and conduct of widows, in the Epistle to Timothy 1, all of which were at a later period appealed to as the ground of Ecclesiastical laws. The Old Testament would also be consulted, especially in matters relating to the family. But, no doubt, the customs and laws of Roman, or Greek, or Jewish society would also be adopted so far as they were not anti-christian in their tendency. Thus a body of Christian customs and rules of life grew up, through which the Church attempted to renew human life, and to establish on earth those just relations in which the Kingdom of Heaven consists 2. The family was the chosen field of its influence, but all parts of human life came under its cognizance; not only the relations of its members to one another, but their bearing towards those who were without. It was a beginning of a new world, a world of tenderness in contrast with the callousness of heathen life, of laboriousness in contrast with the luxury and idleness of Roman citizens; a world in which murder, and adultery, and fraud, as we learn from Pliny's letter to Trajan3, were forbidden, not by an external law, but by the conviction and the longing for purity which bound the citizens themselves together; a world from which the corrupting public shows were banished, and in which the slave became a brother and a free man in Christ; a world in which the antipathies of race and condition were to be obliterated, and of which love was 1 1 Tim. v. 2-16. 2 For the Christian Church existing as a state within a state, see Lecky, Eur. Mor. i. 468. 3.Quod soliti essent (Christiani) ... sacramento se obstringere... ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent.' Plin. Ep. xcvii. to be the supreme law. The ideal was but partially reached at best. Yet many of the Christian customs passed eventually into the laws of the empire, and, later on, into the public sentiment of Christendom. It is the Church beginning thus to form itself which is the basis of the ideal Church of St. Paul and St. John. Already, in his prison at Rome, St. Paul describes himself as joying and beholding the order of the Christian community at Colossae'. This working out of righteousness in the organized life of believers gives substance to all that he says of the Church as the body and the bride of Christ 2, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all3. It is impossible to apply such words as these to a body which is limited in its scope. The Church of St. Paul and St. John is the complete humanity, for nothing short of this can be the fulness of God. When, further, we enter upon the glowing vision of the Apocalypse, we find that what is before the mind of the Seer is a holy city, a society of just men, which is the counterpart, on the one hand, of the corrupt Jerusalem, and, on the other, of the polluted Babylon. These two represent the world under the dominion of the debased Judaism and heathenism. The New Jerusalem is the world under the dominion of Christ. Like the visions of the older Prophets, it has its realization, not in a heavenly state beyond this world, but in a progressively righteous state in this world. Nor is it a society for worship and teaching that the Seer has before his mind ; (there is no temple in the New Jerusalem;) but the 2 1 Col. ii. 5. 3 Eph. i. 22, 23. 6 Id. xxi. 22. |