Those qualities of diversity and unity which, being combined, form the principle of Fellowship, are illustrated in every detail of the Tabernacle. The coverings and curtains are made in several pieces, but linked by loops and taches of blue and gold. The building is of so many different boards but united by horizontal bars with golden rings. The twelve loaves rest under the same holy incense on the one table. The branches of the candlestick are all distinct in their individual places, but are all united in the central Shaft whence they originate. They were to be made with “three bowls... with a knop and a flower in one branch;... so in the six branches... And a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches." Not only do their various lights blend into one confluent glory, but, distinct as they are individually, the flowers and knops (i.e., the promise and potency of fruitfulness) are distributed in such a way as suggests co-operation, and precludes exclusive claim. The successful evangelist visits a place with rich results in conversions. He would be the first to acknowledge that the previous labors and prayers of others had prepared the way for him, and to deny that he was the only instrument used, or that the immediate cause is always the sole cause.
Very early in the world's history its teachers sought to open its eyes to the value of fellowship. In the plain of Shinar they were accomplishing a work so stupendous that God Himself thought necessary to “go down” to stop it. What is there a united mass of people cannot do—either for good or evil? “The Lord said, Behold the people is one,... and now nothing will be restrained from them!” God divided and conquered them. It was He first used that principle divbde et impera, and it proved such an effective one that the Devil, who has often a better appreciation of divine methods than we have, and largely imitates them, has adopted it as his chief mode of warfare.
The Greeks would never have been conquered by that Roman plan of campaign, “Divide and rule,” if they had only listened to their ugly little hunchbacked slave's story about the four bulls that the lion dared not attack so long as they kept together, so that he plotted to get them separated and conquer them in detail: or that other story of the old man who reunited his quarrelsome sons by showing them, how easy it was to break the fagots one by one, but how impossible to do so when they were all tied together in a bundle, with a band round, holding them close together, strengthening, and being strengthened by, one another. Ah, that uniting band, how important it is “Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” Herr Hebich's illustration of the tub is none the less graphic and powerful because it is homely. It must be fitly joined together and then bound together, or else it would not hold water. Everything, from the sewing on of a button up to the making of a Jupiter or Saturn, wants a final belt or ring put round it to unify its atoms. There was only one thing that the foreign cook omitted when he made an English plum-pudding, following the directions with scrupulous accuracy. He did not put it in a cloth; and the result was more interesting than satisfactory.
There can be no such thing as fellowship without something of public spirit; and probably there never was a time in the church's existence when public spirit was more weak. For in general there seems neither grace nor persecution enough to evoke it. If everyone is selfishly to consider his own things and no one those of his neighbor, public spirit is dead and fellowship dissolved. It is necessary to remember that the church has a claim on the sympathies and services of every one of her members, just as the state has on her citizens, under penalties by the law of Misprision, and it is an unnatural thing if the members do not respond. The Greek word “idiot” —ἰδιότης—meant a private person who took no part in public transactions. It was not perhaps originally a term of reproach; in fact it was innocent enough, but not all the powers of language could prevent its ultimately passing into a term of pity and contempt. The Christianity which limits its public interest to occasional sneers at the quarrels of Christians is a poor thing.
Yet, poor thing as it is, it is still infinitely preferable to that contentious and ferocious religiousness which wastes the time and gifts granted by God for the tending of His flock, in quarreling and wrangling. “Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them?”.. so long as their petty and paltry ambitions are satisfied. La Fontaine renders the story of the old man and the fagots pathetically. He dies imploring his sons to be united by bonds of love: “Soyez joints, mes enfants; que l'amour vous accorde!” It were bad enough after such an appeal for them to be disunited, but for them to enter into fratricidal strife..!
And of all fighting that is the worst—when brothers fight—and the bitterest. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. The nearer people approach in resemblance and interests, the more virulently they contend when strife arises. The Jews hated the Romans, but they hated the Samaritans, whose worship most closely of all the world resembled their own, a great deal more. The Mohammedan of the Sunnite sect hates his brother Mohammedan of the Shiites worse than he does a Christian. And the strangest thing of all is that the bitterness of religious quarrels is always in inverse ratio to the importance of the subject in dispute: the smaller the point at issue is, the more fierce and disastrous the convulsion on account of it is in church or state. What an array of power, learning, and eloquence do we see all through the church's history joining battle over the respective merits of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whilst matters serious enough receive no attention at all. How many thousands are Slaughtered for calling Shibboleth, sibboleth— ‘tis merely dropping an H! How many years spent in dividing the churches from John o' Groats to Constantinople simply to determine whether the tonsure is to be crescent like Saint This, or circular like Saint That, while men's souls are dying and “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace”...
“ But we must contend earnestly for the faith.” We must indeed, but not for tonsures, shibboleths, and the like. Better a thousand times that the church be wrecked than the faith surrendered; but what do we of the “laity” care how the “priests” wear their hair, or how they pronounce their Hs, that we should century after century be scattered, disheartened, and anathematized over such things? Every fresh pedant too that comes will tell us that “orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is your doxy: go to, let us make a new sect and say that it is the church (that has been from the beginning), formed on the basis of my new truth—which of course it has always possessed.” And perhaps he will hold up his rushlight to the Sun and insist on our seeing spots there, when we know that those spots are only defects in his own vision, like the “Mariotte blind spots” on the retina.
Some day men may find that to do all that is possible to maintain fellowship is a greater service to God than to get the best of a polemical wrangle; that he who weakens fellowship by pulling its cords so tight as to strain them, or by relaxing them so loose as to surrender them; or who stultifies discipline by laxity to serious evils, or severity to slight offenses; or wantonly introduces or encourages elements of strife amongst the people of God —that such as do these things are not serving but opposing the Head of the church. “Let your moderation be known unto all men.” If we each want our own way in everything, fellowship is impossible.
I do believe, in spite of all that seems to contradict the conviction, that Love is greater than Pedantry, and that such things as rings, cords, knops, loops, and taches are better than dynamite.