The Head

He is the head of the body, the Church. — COLOSSIANS i. 18.

A T a celebrated battle there was one position from which the enemy, after suffering defeat in every other part of the field, kept up an unabated fire. There, a huge twenty-four pounder vomited forth galling and continuous discharges; nor could our artillery, nor musketry, nor riflemen, silence it. “That gun,” said the commanding officer, addressing the men of two regiments in a few brief, brave words, “must be taken by the bayonet. I must have it;” adding, as he placed himself at their head, “No firing, and recollect that I am with you.” There needed no more. They advanced, the grape from the battery crashing through their ranks. They fired four rolling volleys before they charged; but when they did charge, the onset was irresistible.

The importance of a military position may be always estimated by the determination with which it is on the one hand assailed, and on the other hand defended. By this test I have been able to discover the key of an old battle-field. Who fought there, and in what cause they fell, are matters about which history is altogether silent; and even the lingering traditions of the glen are dim and vague, like objects seen through its grey creeping mists. Yet the hoary cairns that are scattered on rolling moor and rugged hill sides tell how war once raged over that abode of peace; and how, where the moorcock crows to the morning, and the shy plover rings out her wail, and lambs chase each other, or playfully engage in mimic fight around these old grey stones, men once had trampled down the heather, staining it of a deeper crimson with their blood. And there, where the rude monuments of the dead stand crowded together for want of room, we know that the opposing tides of battle met with direst shock, and human passions spent their wildest fury. These marks of hardest fighting and greatest carnage still point out the key of the position — the most important post that they had to hold or win in that old field of battle.

According to this rule, we should conclude that the church of Christ has regarded the headship of her Lord as in some respects the very key of her position. She has maintained it as not the least important of the doctrines which she has been charged to hold against all men — holding them to the death. For the sake of this doctrine, for Christ’s crown, for his sole right to rule his own house, and to regulate, without Caesar’s interference, the affairs of his church, her largest, costliest, and most painful sacrifices have been made. And, as if there was an instinct of grace corresponding to that remarkable instinct of nature which teaches even an infant, in the act of fulling, to throw out its hands and arms, and save the head at the expense of its members, with a fidelity that has done her honour, the church has sacrificed her members, and lavishly shed her blood in support of Christ’s headship. For this cause, counting all things but loss, many have suffered the spoiling of their goods; many have gone into banishment and exile; many have ascended the scaffold to lay down their heads on the block, or, embracing the stake with a lover’s ardour, have gone to heaven in a chariot of fire, to wear the crown of martyrdom, and learn how well Christ keeps the promise, Them that honour me I will honour. The apostles Peter and John were the first publicly to maintain this doctrine. At their parting, our Lord commanded his disciples to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; and when the Jewish rulers, attempting to infringe on Christian liberty, commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus, how prompt and how decisive was their reply! It leaves Christian men in corresponding circumstances in no doubt as to the path of duty, whether they have courage to take it or not. Hear their memorable words: “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we can not but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Nor less clear and decisive this reply of Peter’s, on being charged a few days afterwards with having preached contrary to the injunctions of the civil magistrate, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Thus plainly did these men assert and boldly maintain the doctrine that Christ is head of his body, the church. They would have held it treason to own any other authority. So ought we.

It becomes not man to be proud of anything. We have defects enough to clothe us with humility. And a sense of many sins and many shortcomings will teach us, for any grace or honour we may possess, to ascribe glory to him who maketh one to differ from another, and out of the mouth of babes ordaineth strength. Yet, as patriots, we may be permitted to dwell with gratification and gratitude on the fact, that since the day when the apostles so boldly asserted Christ’s sole right to reign in his church, and to regulate all matters of doctrine and discipline, government and duty therein, few countries have been more honoured to testify and to suffer for that truth than has our own. I do not refer only to recent events, nor to the long and bloody struggles of the seventeenth century, nor to the part she played at the glorious Reformation. Her practical testimony to this doctrine dates from a much earlier period. Rude in arts and rough in manners as our forefathers might be, they were the last of the nations to bow the neck to the yoke of Popery. Popish, like Pagan Rome, found our countrymen hard to conquer. And thus, when the lights of lona were extinguished, and nothing was left of a faith comparatively pure but the lonely cells and ruined sanctuaries of Culdee worship, the dreary period of Popish darkness was shorter here than elsewhere — just as is the duration of night on those rugged storm-beaten heights, which catch the morning sun before it has risen on the valleys, and stand up glowing in golden light when the shades of evening have wrapped these in deepening dusky gloom.

And after the era of the Reformation, who does not know, who has not read, now with weeping eyes, and now with burning indignation, what our good fore fathers suffered for Christ’s crown? It was dearer to them than their liberties or lives. Handed down, like an heirloom, from martyred sire to son, this cause is interwoven with our nation’s history, and runs through it like a silver thread. It runs, I may say, in our very blood. We have imbibed it with our mother’s milk. Far away from the smoke and din of cities, it is associated with many a wild weeping glen, the dark moss hag, and those misty mountains where our fathers were hunted down like partridges. There, the moss-grey stone which still bears the rude outlines of a Bible and a sword, is regarded with veneration by a pious peasantry; for it shows that here a true man fell, and a martyr for Christ’s kingly crown sleeps in his lonely grave, waiting the resurrection of the just. How much of its undying interest does our city owe to the localities with which this cause is associated! There, rose the gallows, on which the best and worthiest of the land were hung like caitiffs; and yonder, half-way between that castle and the palace, stood the gate above which their heads sat in ghastly rows, bleaching in the wind, and rain, and sun. In the neighbourhood of this very church we seem to tread on sacred ground. This winding street, these low-browed windows, these old quaint tenements that see us quietly gathering for Sabbath worship, were crowded two hundred years ago with the spectators of a different, I might say a holier, certainly a more stirring scene. “They come!” runs through the anxious crowd, and fixes every wandering eye on the advancing procession. And there, with slow but firm step, comes hoar old age, and there, noble manhood, and there, most wept for by mothers and maidens, fair gentle youth — a band of candidates for martyrdom, witnesses for Christ’s kingly rights, heroes who esteemed it noble for such a cause to die. In truth, our fathers set a higher value on Christ’s headship than they set upon their own heads; and for that cause alone not less than eighteen thousand were faithful unto death during the long, and bloody, but glorious years of persecution. They have gone to their reward. Called, in some form or other, to deny ourselves, and take up our cross, may we follow them, even as they followed Christ! He has said,” Whosoever loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whosoever loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and he that taketh not up his cross and followeth me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall find it.

A few years ago, as the world knows, we felt our selves called on to revive our fathers’ testimony, and shake the dust of two centuries from their time-worn banner. We had a cross to take up. Without knowing its weight, we took it up. And, while it becomes us to confess with sorrow before God and man, that human passions mingled “strange fire” with our service, and that, fighting sometimes for victory as much as for truth, dross adulterated the gold of our offering, we thought then, and think still, that ours was a call of duty, and a righteous cause. We were martyrs neither by desire nor by mistake. But, as I have no wish to lay open old wounds, and would only dwell on those views of this doctrine which may edify the whole church and promote mutual love, I will only say further, that I hope, and trust, and pray, that the more the churches are called to suffer for Christ’s headship, they will hold it the more resolutely. Never fear. There are other things beside the sturdy oak which the roaring tempest nurses into strength. The storms that strip the tree of some leaves, perhaps of some rotten branches, but moor it deeper in the rifts of the everlasting rock. Christ’s words cannot fail, On this rock have I built my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

In now entering on the subject-matter of my text, I remark —

I. That Christ’s body is his church.

One to examine, but not to dissect, while all other bodies shall die, this is deathless. “Because I live,” says our Lord, “ye shall live also.” Paradox as it sounds, this body is ever changing, yet unchangeable: different and the same; an undying whole formed of dying parts. Strange! yet not more strange than many things in nature. You are not the same person, for example, who worshipped here twelve months ago. In name, in form, in features the same, in substance you are entirely different. Like Michael and Satan, who contended for the body of Moses, life and death have been contending for yours; death attacking, life defending; so that, the former constantly repairing what the latter is constantly destroying, the corporeal forms which we animate and inhabit, are undergoing such rapid as well as perpetual change, that a period much shorter than seven years renews our whole system. Life is just a long siege; and, though death triumph in the end, looking at the many years over which the struggle is protracted, surely we are fearfully and wonderfully preserved as well as made. But take another, and more familiar illustration. Look at a river. The exile returns to the haunts of his early years, and there, emblem of the peace of God, the river flows as it flowed when his life was young. Tumbling in snowy foam over the same rock, winding its snake-like way through the same verdant meadows, washing the feet of the same everlasting hills, it rushes through the glen with the impetuous passions of a perpetual youth, to pursue its course onward to the ocean that lies gleaming like a silver rim around the land. A grey old man, he seats himself on the bank where wild roses still shed their blossoms on a bed of thyme, and the crystal pool at his feet, these waters foaming round the old grey stone, that bright dancing stream, as they recall many touching memories of happy childhood and companions dead or gone, seem the same. Yet they are not. The liquid atoms, the component parts of the river, have been undergoing perpetual change. Even so it is with the church of Christ. The stream of time bears on to eternity, and the stream of grace bears on to glory, successive generations, while the church herself, like a river fed by perennial fountains, remains — unchangeable in Christ’s immutability, in his immortality immortal.

These figures, however, fail in one important point. That river is one. The body is one. Unfortunately, the churches are many, split into such numerous, and, in not a few instances, such senseless divisions, that I know nothing better fitted to make a man recoil from the spirit of sectarianism than to see, drawn out to its full length, the long, wondrous, weary roll of the various sects that exist in Christendom. Fancy all these urging their claims on a newly-converted heathen! What a Babel of tongues! With what perplexity might he ask, amid so many contending factions, Which is the true church and body of Christ? Let us see.

Seven sons of Jesse are summoned into Samuel’s presence. Goodly men, they stand before him, candidates for the crown of Israel. But they cannot all be kings; and which of them is to be the Lord’s anointed? One after another, all the seven are rejected. Amazed at the result, the prophet turns to their father, saying, “Are here all thy children?” and on being told, “There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep,” he says, “Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither.” A messenger goes. By and by, feet are heard at the door; it opens; and, little dreaming of the honours that await him, David, who had left his harp, and pipe, and playful lambs, on the hills of Bethlehem, enters — modesty, and manliness, and beauty in that countenance which was “goodly to look to.” While the old man eyes the lad, as he stands reverently before him, a voice not caught by Jesse’s ear, but heard by Samuel’s, says, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.”

Now, suppose that the different churches, like these sons of Jesse, stood before us. Whatever may be made of their claims, each cannot be Christ’s true body. He has but one church; for the second Adam, like the first, is the husband of one wife. And just as the church cannot have two heads, neither can the head have two bodies; for, as that body were a monster which had more heads than one, not less monstrous were that form where one head was united to two separate bodies. Of all these churches, then, each claiming to be cast in the true gospel mould — that with consecrated bishops, this with simple presbyters, this other without either; that administering baptism to infants as well as adults, this only to adults; that robed in a ritual of many forms, this thinking that religion, like beauty, when unadorned, is adorned the most — which is Christ’s body, the Lamb’s wife? Which are we to receive as the favourite of heaven? Of which does God say, as he said of David among rival brethren, Arise, anoint her, for this is she? Of none of them. Christ has a church, but it is none of these. In explanation of a remark which may surprise some, and is fitted to teach all of us humility and charity, I observe —

II. That Christ’s body, which is not identical with any one church, is formed of all true believers, to what ever denomination they may belong.

It is natural for men to be partial to their own sect. Nor do I quarrel with the feeling, if, looking kindly on others, you are ready to extend the hand of fellowship to all that love the Lord Jesus Christ. Mothers are prone to think their own children lovelier than their neighbours’; and nothing is more natural than that we should say of our own denomination, Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. That is no breach of Christian charity. But to foster a spirit of sectarianism, and thus sin against Christ’s spirit, is an offence as great as to sin against his truth. In some respects, indeed, I think bigotry is worse than heresy; and more hateful in God’s sight than error, is the haughty churchism or exclusive self-righteous pride which says to others, “Stand by thyself; come not near me; for I am holier than thou.”

“The king’s daughter is all glorious within;” but where on earth is the church which will stand that test? Where is the church that, among other points of resemblance to the ark, has not the unclean as well as clean within its walls, raven and dove, leopard and kid, the cruel lion with the gentle lamb? Are not events ever and anon occurring to remind us of the two birds Noah sent forth on a voyage of discovery? Like this snow-white dove on weary wing returning to the ark, there are souls that can find no rest in sin or in the world, or anywhere away from God; happy souls! but, alas, there are others, also tenants of the ark, like yonder foul raven, that croaks and flaps his wings above corruption, and riots on the carcasses of the dead. Such characters as the last are found in the purest churches; spots on the sun, dead flies among the ointment. Surely it behoves us to see that we are not of their number. For, oh! these are sad and solemn words, Many are calkd, but few are chosen. And, happier than Christ, happier than Paul, that pastor must have a small and select flock whose members cost him no anxiety, neither fears nor the tears of him who said, Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

By these remarks I would not disparage outward ordinances and forms. They are valuable in their own place and for their own purposes; frames, as they are, to set the picture in; caskets for truth’s jewels; dead poles, no doubt, yet useful to support living plants, and very beautiful when the bare stem is festooned with green leaves, and crowned with a head of flowers. The church of Christ, however, is not to be identified with this or that other form either of government or worship. She embraces the good of all denominations, and rejects the bad, from whatever hands they have received the rite of baptism, to whatever communion they may belong, however pure their creed, or scriptural their form of worship. “The just shall live by faith,” by nothing else. He belongs therefore to the true church who believes; and he who believes not, to whatever church he may belong, has “neither part nor lot in this matter.” “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” God help us to lay that truth to heart, and to embrace the Saviour as he is offered in the gospel!

I have seldom heard this catholic and happy doctrine more pointedly expressed than by a poor woman who dwelt in one of the darkest and most wretched quarters of our city. Away from her native home, and without one earthly friend, she had floated here, a stranger in a strange land, to sink into the most abject poverty; her condition but one degree better than our Saviour’s. In common with the fox, she had a hole to lay her head in. Yet, although poor and outwardly wretched, she was a child of God, one of the jewels which, if sought for, we should sometimes find in dust-heaps. With a bashfulness not unnatural, she had shrunk from exposing her poverty to the stare of well-robed congregations, resorting on Sabbath days to the well — appropriate place — where a pious man was wont to preach to ragged outcasts, crying in the name of Jesus, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. Supposing, in my ignorance of this, that she was living, like the mass around her, in careless neglect of her soul, I began to warn her. Nor shall I soon forget how she interrupted me, and, drawing herself up with an air of humble dignity, and half offended, said, Sir, I worship at the well; and am sure that if we are true believers in Jesus, and love him, and try to follow him, we shall never be asked at the judgment day, Where did you worship? Well said, and well shot, thou poor one; that arrow hits the mark! And as I hold no other creed, nor admit anything to be of vital importance but genuine heaven-born faith, let me ask, Are you true believers? Blessed are you! Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! Are you unbelievers, impenitent, ungodly? You may by profession belong to a church which holds the head, and holds truth, and has, in God’s providence, been honoured to testify and suffer for it; but what of that? There is no safety in that. On the contrary, you appear only the more offensive to a holy God. A spot looks worst on the face of beauty; Satan looked most hateful when he stood among the sons of God; and, as I have observed at funerals in the winter time, skulls never look so grim, nor the churchyard mould so black, as when they have been flung on a bank of snow. Trust not in your church, nor say. “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we.” Judgment shall begin at the house of God.

III. Christ’s body, in a sense, embraces all those churches which hold the essential truths of the gospel.

It was the misfortune of Europe that Charles Y.

did not learn at an early period of his life the lesson which he was afterwards taught in a Spanish cloister. It had saved him much treasure, the world much blood shed, and his soul much sin. After vainly attempting to quench the light of the Reformation, and make all men think alike, this great monarch, resigning his crown, retired to a monastery. Wearied, perhaps, with the dull round of mechanical devotions, he betook himself, in the mechanical arts, to something more congenial to his active mind. After long and repeated efforts, he found that he could not make two time-pieces go alike, two machines, that had neither mind nor W7ill. move in perfect, harmony. Whereupon, it is said, he uttered this memorable reflection, What a fool was I to attempt to make all men think alike! Unfortunately for the peace of the church and for the interests of Christian charity, Charles the king has had more followers than Charles the philosopher.

There is a broad line of distinction between the essentials and the circumstantials of the faith. Yet what violent, what unnatural attempts at uniformity have men made, as if uniformity were a law of God! It is on no such model that he has constructed our world. God, while he preserves unity, delights in variety. A dull, dreary, uninteresting uniformity, is quite foreign to nature. Look at the trees of the forest! all presenting the same grand features, what variety in their forms! Some, standing erect, wear a proud and lofty air; some, modest-like, grow lowly and seek the shade; some, like grief, hang the head and have weeping branches; some, like aspiring and unscrupulous ambition, climb up by means of others, killing what they climb by; while some, rising straight and tall, with branches all pointing upwards, present in their tapering forms emblems of the piety that spurns the ground and seeks the skies. Or look at the flowers, what variety of gay colours in a meadow! Or look at mankind, what variety of expression in human faces, of tones in human voices! There are no two faces alike, no two flowers alike, no two leaves alike, I believe no two grains of sand alike. In that variety God manifests his exhaustless resources, and Nature possesses one of her most attractive charms. And why insist on all men observing a uniform style of worship, or thinking alike on matters that are not essential to salvation? You might as well insist on all men wearing the same expression of face, or speaking in the same tone of voice; for I believe that there are as great natural and constitutional differences in the minds as in the bodies of men.

How tolerant was Paul of differences! Forgetting how he bore even with errors which would now-a-days call down prompt excommunication on their authors, men, insisting on uniformity in the mere circumstantials of religion, have rent the church and sown the seeds of discord far and wide. Praying all the while for the peace of Jerusalem, they have made the church of Christ present such a melancholy spectacle as Jerusalem itself exhibited when, the Roman without and famine within, different factions raged in the city, and the

Jews, fired by ferocious passions, plunged their swords into each other’s bosoms.

His church has not followed her Lord’s example. They were thieves and murderers whom Christ cleared out of the temple. But, struck with frenzy, aiming at an impossible uniformity, his followers have driven their brethren out, while Religion has stood by, wringing her hands, like Rachel weeping for her children, because they were not. No man, says the Bible, hateth his own flesh. What sane man consents to part with an arm or limb unless it be dead or incurably diseased? But churches, possessed, if not of a devil, yet of the greatest folly, have cut off their living members for no other offence than some small differences, some petty trifling sore, which the progress of time or the balm of kindness would have healed. I do not deny that there have been justifiable separations. There must needs be offences; and it does not follow that the woe pronounced on those by whom offences come falls on the party stigmatised as separatists. It is they who, creating wrongs or refusing redress, compel men of tender conscience to leave a church, that are guilty, if there be schism, of its sin.

Divisions are bad things. Do not fancy that I have any sympathy with those who, confounding charity with indifference, regard matters of religion as not worth disputing about. Such a state of death is still worse than war. Give me the roaring storm rather than the peace of the grave. Division is better than such union as the frost produces, when with its cold and icy fingers it binds up into one dead, congealed, heterogeneous mass, stones and straws, pearls and pebbles, gold and silver, iron and clay, substances that have nothing in common. Yet divisions are bad things. They give birth to bad passions. They cause Ephraim to envy Judah, and Judah to vex Ephraim. Therefore, what we ought to aim at, is to heal them, and where we cancannot heal them, to soften their asperities. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God.” If for conscience’s sake Christian men must part, oh, that they would part, saying with Abraham, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, for we are brethren. Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.” But it may not be the will of God that his church, in its collective character, should ever present, in this world, the characteristic feature of that beautiful tree. The palm has a peculiar port. It rises tall and graceful in one straight stem without a single branch, up to the leafy plumes that wave above the desert sands and form its graceful crown. The church, throwing out many goodly and fruitful boughs, may ever present apparent variety in actual unity — like that giant oak which, with its roots in the rock and its head in the skies, throws out many a branch to catch the blessed gifts of heaven in dews, and showers, and sunbeams. We hear much about the unity of the church. And how often has it been made to serve the interests of falsehood, how often has it been used as a spell, wherewith cunning priests have bound simple men to systems of gross error? Rightly understood, the unity of the church is by no means incompatible with the existence of different denominations. What are they but the branches of a tree which still is one; one in root, one in stem, one in sap, one in flower, and one in fruit. We have one faith, one spirit, and one baptism. We are united in Christ; we meet in that centre; and, like the radii of a circle, the nearer we approach our common centre, the nearer we draw to Christ, we shall be the nearer to each other. Let us gladly recognise a common brotherhood, and love one another, even as Christ loved us. Members of the same family, travellers to the same home, called with the same holy calling, let us ever remember the words of Joseph to his brethren, See that ye fall not out by the way.

But of all the forms of imagery under which Christ’s church is set forth, I prefer that in my text. Bringing out as well as any other our relationship to Christ, and better than any other our relationship to each other, it teaches us the most blessed lessons of love, and charity, and tender sympathy. When bill-hook or pruning-knife lops a branch from the tree, the wounded stem bleeds, and seems for a while to drop some tears of sorrow, but they are soon dried up; the other boughs suffer no pain, show no sympathy, their leaves dance merrily in the wind over the poor dead branch that lies withering in their shade. But sym pathy pervades the body and its members. Touch my finger roughly, and the whole body feels it; wound this foot, and the pang, thrilling through my frame, shoots upward to the head; let the heart, or the head, or even a tooth ache, and all the system suffers disorder. With what tenderness is a diseased member touched! What anxious efforts do we make to save a limb! With what slow reluctance have I seen a wasted patient, after months or even long years of suffering, consent to the last remedy, the surgeon’s knife! What holy lessons of love, charity, sympathy, does Christ therefore teach us by the figure of my text! We have differences; but do these form any reason why we should not love each other, give and forgive, bear and forbear, suffer and sympathise, one with another; and agreeing to differ, walk together as far as we are agreed? Let us keep “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” These differences are like our dark cold shadows, that, little at noon, grow larger as night approaches, assuming a gigantic size when the sun creeps along the horizon of a winter sky, or hangs low at his rise or setting. Sun of Righteousness! rise higher and higher over us, till in thy light and love the church enjoys the full blaze of thy meridian beams, and these shadows all but vanish! For this blessed end, God of love, pour out thy Spirit more affluently on the churches! Then shall the brethren dwell together in unity, and the world say, as it said in the days of old, See how these Christians love one another!