ART. II.—THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONNEXION WITH THE CHURCH, AS DEVELoped among HEATHEN CHRISTIANS.

From Neander's "History of the Planting and Progress of the Christian Church under the Apostles." Translated from the German, by the Editor.

PRELIMINARY NOTE.

The following article contains a profound discussion of the questions respecting the constitution and features of the primitive church, so far as these can be ascertained from the New Testament, or from other contemporary sources. The reader must, however, every where bear in mind, that the author is here treating only of the apostolic age, and of the churches composed of Gentile Christians. Consequently he does not refer to changes introduced at later periods. These of course are detailed in his larger History of the Christian Church. This latter work, we are happy to learn, is now in the course of translation by the Rev. Prof. Torrey, of the University of Vermont; to whom the public may look with entire confidence for a correct and elegant version. See Bibl. Repos. Vol. III. p. 66—74.

One word in regard to the manner in which the present translation has been executed. There are two methods in which a translator may proceed. One is, to give simply the sense of the original in the translator's own language and style; in this way the reader obtains the thoughts of the original author, but gains no acquaintance with his style and manner as a writer. The other mode is to translate the language of the original, as well as express the thoughts; so that the writer himself, in his peculiar modes of thought and expression, may be placed before the reader. In lighter works, the former method may be sufficient; in more important ones, the latter is alone admissible. Indeed, so much often depends on the shaping of the thought and the colouring of the expression, that justice cannot be done to a writer in any other way; nor even in this way without peculiar qualifications in the translator. In the following pages I have endeavoured to give to the style the general character and features of that of the author; I hope it will not be found to have lost in perspicuity. My aim has been to give to each thought the exact shape of the original, and also so far as possible the same form of expression; and everywhere accurately to express the meaning, the whole meaning, and nothing but the meaning, of the author.-ED.

THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

The forms in which the constitution of the christian community first unfolded itself, were, as we have already remarked, copied in a great degree from those forms of religious association, which existed among the Jews. But these forms, as first applied and perfected among Jewish Christians, would not have passed over in like manner to communities gathered independently among the heathen; they would not here also have propagated themselves thus extensively; had they not been so entirely accordant with the very nature of that christian fellowship, which was to receive from them its organic manifestation. It was through the PECULIAR NATURE of this christian fellowship, that the christian church was to be distinguished from all other religious communities; and this became indeed, after Christianity had burst the forms of Judaism, particularly prominent among the churches of Heathen Christians, which could thus assume a free and independent form.

As Christ had now once for all satisfied that religious necessity from the feeling of which a priesthood had everywhere arisen, in that through the atonement made for man he had satisfied the feeling of the need of mediation between God and man, which is so deeply seated in the consciousness of separation from God through sin,-there remained no longer any place for any farther necessary mediation. When therefore in the apostolic epistles, the Old Testament ideas of a priesthood, of priestly worship, of sacrifices, are applied to the new religious polity, this is done with the single purpose of showing, that since Christ has forever realized that which was the aim of the priesthood and sacrifices under the Old Testament, THE RECONCILIATION OF MEN WITH GOD, so now all who through faith appropriate to themselves that which he thus accomplished for mankind, are brought thereby to stand in the same relation with each other towards God, without the need of any further mediation; that they all, consecrated to God and sanctified through fellowship with Christ, are called to bring to God their whole life as a spiritual thank-offering acceptable to Him; that their whole course of consecrated action, is a true spiritual priestly worship, and Christians a community of God composed only of priests.1 This

1 Rom. 12: 1. 1 Pet. 2: 9.

idea of the universal priesthood of all Christians, springing as it does from the consciousness of an atonement and grounded alone in this, is in part distinctly declared and unfolded; in part it is pre-supposed in the predicates, figures, and comparisons, which are applied to the christian life.

Since all believers mutually shared in the same consciousness of a like common relation to Christ as their Redeemer and of a fellowship with God obtained through him; there was founded also in this circumstance a similar relation of the believers among each other; while at the same time the basis of every other relation was taken away, such as existed under other religious systems between an order of priests and the people at large, of whom they were the guides and for whom they acted as mediators before God. The apostles themselves were far from assuming a relation to the believers, which should have any resemblance to a mediating priesthood; they place themselves uniformly in this respect in a relation of equality with them. When Paul assures the churches of his intercession for them, he also entreats their intercession for himself. Hence then, there could consequently arise in the christian church no such class of persons, like the priests of more ancient systems, who, as the only persons of full age and knowledge in religion, had their secret (esoteric) religious doctrines for themselves, and held the people, as in a state of spiritual non-age, in constant dependence upon themselves; whose office it was, to unfold, to guide, and to govern, the general religious consciousness of the community. Indeed, such a relation would have been inconsistent with the consciousness of a like dependence upon Christ and a like relation to him, of a like fellowship of life with him. The scenes of the first Pentecost had just shewn, how one and the same consciousness of a higher life, proceeding from fellowship with Christ should fill all hearts; and the same was repeated with every new mutual awakening which preceded and resulted in the founding of a church. The apostle Paul, in the fourth chapter of Galatians, describes as the common point between Judaism and heathenism in this respect, the condition of non-age, of bondage under external ordinances. With the consciousness of atonement, he represents this bondage and non-age as taken away; the same spirit should be in all. Over against the heathen, who blindly followed their priests and were devoted to all the arts of delusion which they practised, he places the Christians, who through faith in the Redeemer are themselves

become the organs of the divine Spirit, who may themselves perceive in the inward man the voice of the living God. Paul thinks he should assume too much, were he, in reference to a church already founded, to represent himself in spiritual things only as a giver; since in this respect there is for all only one giver, the Saviour himself, as the fountain of all life in the church; all others, as members of the spiritual body endued with life from him, the Head, should stand towards each other in the relation of a mutual giving and receiving. Hence, in writing to the Romans, after expressing his longing to come to them in order to impart to them some spiritual gift for their confirmation, -lest he should seem to ascribe too much to himself, he immediately subjoins the explanatory remark, that he means only, that they might mutually strengthen each other in the faith by christian communion.

Christianity gave indeed, on the one hand, to the church, through the Holy Spirit as the common principle of a higher life, an element of union above all else which can unite souls to each other, a principle destined to subordinate to itself all those differences which have their ground in the ordinary developement of human nature, and in this subordination to adjust them all to an equilibrium. But on the other hand too, through this divine life, which every where followed the law of the natural and ordinary developement of human nature, the peculiarities of the inward man were not destroyed; on the contrary, they were purified, sanctified, and ennobled ; they were urged forward to a freer and higher culture. This higher unity of life was to be exhibited in a manifold variety of different peculiarities, all animated by the same Spirit and mutually supplying each other's deficiencies in the compound whole of the kingdom of God. Hence the particular aspect, under which this divine life became active and revealed itself in each individual, was conditioned by the inward peculiarities existing in that individual. The apostle Paul indeed affirms: "All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, who divideth to every one severally AS HE WILL;"3 but it by no means thence follows, that Paul supposes a wholly unconditional working of the divine Spirit. He will here only render prominent the contrary of an arbitrary human estimate, which admitted only certain species of divine gifts, and would not acknowledge the manifold variety in the distribution of them. 2 Rom. 1: 11, 12. 3 1 Cor. 12: 11.

1 1 Cor. 12:1 sq.

The similitude of the members of the human body, which the apostle afterwards employs, describes the not arbitrary, but regular, developement of the new creation in the soul according to the natural though now sanctified order; for it follows from this similitude, that as among the members of the human body each has its appropriate place assigned by nature, each its appropriate office assigned by nature, and each its appropriate capability in reference to these; so also the divine life in man follows in its developement a similar law, founded in the natural relation to each other of the peculiarities which it operates to quicken.

From all this we gather the proper idea of a Charisma or gift, so all-important in the history of the first developement of christian life and of the constitution of the christian church in the primitive ages. Under this name, in the apostolic age, is understood any predominant capability of an individual, in and through which the power and efficacy of the Holy Spirit which quickens him, manifests itself; whether this capability appears as something immediately communicated by the Holy Spirit; or whether it existed already in the individual before his conversion, and now being quickened, sanctified, and elevated through the new principle of life, is consecrated to the one great and common object, the constant internal and external developement of the kingdom of God or of the church of Christ. That which is the soul of the whole christian life, and which constitutes the internal unity of this life, that faith which works by love, cannot be regarded as itself a special Charisma; for it is this, constituting as it does the very essence of the whole christian disposition, that must control all the individual christian capabilities. Indeed, it

1 The pavέowolç тоν лνεуμαтоs, manifestation of the Spirit, peculiar to each individual. 1 Cor. 12: 7.

2 The term of most general import, by which, after Paul coined it in this sense, is expressed all that which has reference to the internal requisitions of the divine kingdom, in respect both to the whole and to its parts, is the word oixodouɛiv, to build; subst. oixodouń, a building, 1 Cor. 3:9, 10. This use of the word proceeds from that mode of view, which compares the christian life of the whole church and of its individual members to a building, a temple of God, erected upon the foundation on which this edifice must necessarily rest, 1 Cor. 3: 9, 10, and ever built up progressively and unceasingly more and more from the foundation. So the kingdom of God is to be ever progressively and unceasingly built up. See the striking remarks of Nitzsch in his Obserrationes ad Theologiam practicam felicius excolendam, Bonn 1831, p. 21. VOL. IV. No. 14.

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