The Transfigured Church

The wonder inside the Church aroused inquisitive interest without. There came to the Church an exceptional and plentiful endowment, and, as by the constraint of a mystic gravitation, the outside crowd began to move, like the waters swayed by the moon. The crowd may have moved towards the Church in the temper of a flippant curiosity, or in the spirit of unfriendly revolt, or in the solemn mood of appropriating awe. Whatever may have been the constraint, the waters were no longer stagnant, the masses were no longer heedless and apathetic; the heedlessness was broken up, interest was begotten, and the multitude came together.”

Is the modern Church the centre of similar interest and wonder? Is there any awed and mesmeric rumour breathing through the streets, stirring the indifferent heart into eager questionings? The modern Church claims immediate kinship and direct and vital lineage with that primitive fellowship in the upper room. Does she manifest the power of the early Church? Does she reveal the same magnetic influence and constraint?

I know that ‘^ the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” And so it is with the Spring. The Spring ^’ cometh not with observation,” but you speedily have tokens that she is here. She can hide her coming behind March squalls, and she can step upon our shores in the rough attire of a blustering and tempestuous day; but even though her coming may be without observation, her presence cannot be hid. And even so it is with the Kingdom: she may make no noisy and ostentatious display of her coming, but the sleeping seeds feel her approach, and the valley of bones experiences an awaking thrill, and ‘^ there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” I think, therefore, that we are justified in seriously inquiring as to the ‘’ resurrection power “of our Churches, the measure of their quickening influence, their net result in reaching and stirring and consecrating the energies of a community. How do they stand in the judgment? Is the Pentecostal morning repeated, and is the gracious miracle the talk of the town? Does the multitude come together, ‘^ greatly wondering “?

Carry the inquisition to the regular and frequent fellowship of the Church. So many times a week her members gather together in the upper room. What happens in the hallowed shrine? Are we held in solemn and enriching amazement at the awful doings? And when we come forth again, is there about us a mysterious impressiveness which arrests the multitude, and which sends abroad a spirit of questioning like a healthy contagion? Can we honestly say that by our ordinary services the feet of the heedless crowd are stayed, and that the people come together ‘^ greatly wondering “? In answer to all these searching questions I think that even the most optimistic of us will feel obliged to confess that the general tendency is undisturbed, that we do not generate force enough to stop the drift, and that the surrounding multitude remains uninfluenced.

Now, when we consider these unattracted or alienated peoples, we can roughly divide them into three primary classes. First, there are those who never think about us at all. So very remote are the highways of their thought and life that the impulse of the Church is spent before it reaches their mental and moral abode. We can scarcely describe their attitude as one of indifference, because the mood of indifference would imply a negligent sense of our existence, and I can discern no signs of such perception. We contribute no thread to the warp and woof of their daily life. We bring no nutriment to the common meal; we do not even provide a condiment for the feast. Our presence in the city brings neither pleasure nor pang, neither sweet nor bitter, neither irritation nor ease; their souls are not disquieted within them, neither are they lulled into a deeper and more perilous sleep. We are neither irritants nor sedatives; to this particular class we simply do not exist.

And, then, secondly, there are those who have thought about us, and as a result of their thinking have determined to ignore us. For all simple, positive, and progressive purposes we are no longer any good. We are exhausted batteries; we have no longer the power to ring a loud alarm, or to light a new road, or to energise some heavy and burdensome crusade. Our once stern and sacrificial warfare has now become a bloodless and self-indulgent quest. It is not only that the once potent shellcases have been emptied of their explosive content, they have been converted into dinner-gongs! The once brilliant and unconditional ethical ideal has been dimmed and shadowed by worldly compromise. The pure and oxygenated flame of righteous passion has been changed into the fierce but smoky bonfire of sectarian zeal. We are looked upon as engaged in petty and childish controversy, losing ourselves in vague and nebulous phraseology, decking ourselves in vestures and postures as harmless and indifferent as the dresses worn at a fancy ball. That is the estimate formed of us by a vast section of the thinking crowd. You will find it reflected week by week in the labour papers, where we are regarded as straws in some side-bay of a mighty river, riding serenely round and round and round, and we do not even show the drift of the stream, the dominant movement of our age. Our speech and our doings are of interest to the antiquary, but for all serious, practical, forceful, and aspiring life our Churches do not count.

And, thirdly, there are those who think about us, and who are constrained by their thinking into the fiercest and most determined opposition. To these men the Church is not like Bunyan’s Giant Pope, alive but impotent, and “by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can do little more than sit in his cave’s mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them.’’ No, to this class the Church can do more than grin; it can reach and tear, and its ministry is still destructive. Its influence is perverse and perverting. Its very faith is a minister of mental and moral paralysis. Its dominant conceptions befog the common atmosphere, and chill and freeze “the genial currents of the soul.” Its common postures and practices, its defences and aggressions, perpetuate and confirm human alienations and divisions. The Church cannot be ignored; it is not a harmless and picturesque ruin; it is a foul fungus souring the common soil, and for the sake of all sweet and beautiful things its nefarious influence must be destroyed.

This is by no means an exhaustive analysis of the alienated multitude, but it is sufficiently descriptive for my present purpose. In each of these three great primary classes the people stand aloof, indifferent and resentful, and the Church is not endowed with that subduing and triumphant impressiveness which would turn their reverent feet toward herself. Now, how stands it with the Church? Does she seem fitted to strike, and arrest, and silence, and allure the careless or suspicious multitudes? What is there imique and amazing about her? Her Lord has promised her a marvellous distinctiveness. She is to be ‘’ a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing ‘M A glorious Church ‘^: shining amid all the surrounding twilights with the radiance of a splendid noon! “Not having spot “: no defect, no blemish, no impaired function, no diseased limb! ‘^ Or wrinkle “: there shall be no sign of age about her, or any waste; she shall never become an anachronism; she shall always be as young as the present age, ever distinguished by her youthful brow, and by her fresh and almost boisterous optimism! ‘’ Or wrinkle, or any such thing ‘’! Mark the final, holy swagger of it, as though by a contemptuous wave of the hand the Apostle indicates the entire rout of the unclean pests that invade and attack an apostate Church. *’ Or any such thing ‘’! Are these great words of promise in any high degree descriptive of our own Church? Is this our distinctiveness? “Not having spot “: have we no withered hands, no halt, no blind, no lame, no lepers? “Or wrinkle ‘’: are we really distinguished by the invincible and contagious energies of perpetual youth? Does not the holding up of this great ideal throw our basal defects into dark and ugly relief? The pity of it all is just this, that the Church, with all its loud and exuberant professions, is exceedingly like “the world.” There is no clean, clear line of separation. In place of the promised glories we have a tolerable and unexciting dimness; in place of superlative whiteness we have an uninteresting gray; and in place of the spirit of an aggressive youthfulness we have a loitering and time-serving expediency. There would be no diflSculty, if only we had seized upon the fulness of our resources, and had become clothed with the riches of our promised inheritance, in men being able to distinguish, in any general company, the representatives of the Church of the living God. There would be about them the pervasive joy of spiritual emancipation, resting upon all their speech and doings like sunlight on the hills. There would be about them a spiritual spring and buoyancy which would enable them to move amid besetting obstacles with the nimbleness of a hart. Thou hast made my feet like hinds’ feet! ““By my God have I leaped over a wall!” There would be about them the fine serenity which is born of a mighty alliance. And there would be the strong, healthy pulse of a holy and hallowing purpose, beating in constant and forceful persistence. Such characteristics would distinguish any man, and any company, and any Church, and the startled multitude would gather around in questioning curiosity. But the alluring wonder is largely absent from our Church. Men pass from the world into our precincts as insensible of any difference as though they had passed from one side of the street to the other, and not feeling as though they had been transported from the hard, sterile glare of the city thoroughfare into the fascinating beauties of a Devonshire lane. What, then, do we need? We need the return of the wonder, the arresting marvel of a transformed Church, the phenomenon of a miraculous life. I speak not now of the wonders of spasmodic revivals; and, indeed, if I must be

Keep reading