IV.
THE ESTABLISHING OF THE CHURCH.
"Till He establish Jerusalem."
Jerusalem, the city of God, of necessity represents the people of God, first of all as an organised whole, and then in the separate individuals that constitute the whole. The chapter accordingly sets before us, as one of the objects towards which God is working, an established Church, the object of universal praise. The word " established " is the prophet's, and must not be taken in the sense in which it is used in a standing ecclesiastical dispute. Concerning that dispute, indeed, neither the prophet nor Scripture anywhere has much directly to say, and certainly here the meaning does not go beyond the ordinary idea of making the Church steadfast, firm, strong. To a large extent it answers that descrip- tion already, notwithstanding the doubt and hesitancy or the cynical rejoicing of those who cannot see through the controversial smoke that envelops it. It has been compared to a great light-
^ A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers, p. 27.
48o THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
house, directing men to safety, played about by storm and foam, whose misty quiverings seem at times to make it quiver, yet standing immovable upon its foundation of rock, and surviving unharmed the malice of all the elements.
If ever the victorious power of His Church seems to be almost paling to defeat, and His servants to be working no deliverance upon the earth, the cause is not to be found in Him, who is " without variableness," nor in His gifts, which are " without repentance," but solely in us, who let go our hold of the eternal might. No ebb withdraws the waters of that great ocean ; and if sometimes there be sand and ooze where once the flashing jQood brought life and motion, it is because careless warders have shut the sea gates.
The hindrances in the way of the establishing of the Church are chiefly uncertainty of revelation, and the worldly and selfish forces which disregard the claims of God.
1. We are told that in some Christian creeds there are points where the creed conflicts with reason, and where the supremacy of reason must be maintained ; that no support can be found for the prescribed moral usages either in the fundamental principles of human nature or in an adequate authority outside of it ; that some of the ceremonials of religion are destitute of dignity, inwardness, art, and have ceased to be in any way the expression or the product of life. The verdict of impossibility is at times pronounced over the contents of the Bible in the name of physical science, or its arrangement and inspiration are assailed in the name of historical criticism. All this certainly does not at first sight and upon the surface look like establishment. On the contrary, by some men it is held to be a proof of failure, whilst others regard it with suspicion as an evidence at least of weak- ness, and are tempted to turn from passages of this kind with the exulting or the sad conclusion, that both the Scriptures and the religion to which they minister are moribund and decaying, that little further advantage from them in regard to morals or to human well-being can reasonably be expected.
But that conclusion is too hasty, unwarranted by the experi- ence of the past, inconsistent with principles that never consent to be ignored, and with manifest tendencies in the drift of human
ISAIAH 481
thought and opinion. For if the extreme supernaturalism of our fathers is gradually becoming a little discredited, and the number is decreasing of those who are prepared to exalt the merely unintelligible into the miraculous, the testimony of consciousness on the other hand is in all probability accepted to-day more widely, and invested with a higher authority, than at any previous period. It is a shifting and redisposition of the evidences of faith and morals — disturbing to the most " reverent minds, and dangerous to some ; but it is a shifting which promises to make the foundation in human thought of religion and of the moral sentiments more solid and unassailable than ever. Similarly with the appearance of weakness which the Bible is supposed to be taking on amidst the processes of historical criticism through which it is passing. Not only is it a distinct advantage to the thoughtful disciple to have sometimes " to breast the bracing air of opposition, and to join in the fight of faith where all are striving for what they honestly believe to be true," but there is really no need to regard these modern investigations, at least as they are pursued in most cases in this country, with suspicion either of unfriendliness or of danger. The man who of all scholars of the land is perhaps the most completely in sympathy with them, and most deeply committed to their methods and results, writes that "there is a message from God to man in every part of the Bible," and that the condition of discovering the message is that the reason be "stimulated to its highest activity by spiritual influences."
2, Again, many are loudly telling us that Christianity is a myth, and others that it is only one among many religions which are leading humanity on to a distant goal ; that science and Western civilisation are to do the work that the Churches once did. And we are told that the value of the human soul is a vanishing quantity, and that God is a human emotion, and immortal life a dream. And without accepting these meanings from the sunless gulfs of doubt as the real truth of things, many people are flagging in their enthusiasm for the conversion of the world because of them ; they become paralysed and heart-sick, and they relax effort. It is in prayer, in living union with Christ, that all this pessimism vanishes like a nightmare, and we start 31