Letter 6 on “the Church” in a Place, City or Town
Dear Brother, When we come to the means of carrying out unity in a place, we must not be surprised that Scripture, though it knows no other principle, leaves open the means which must necessarily apply with some difference of form where the circumstances differ. How little is said as to the mode of receiving souls Yet is this confessedly a most important question, and sure to test the intelligence and heart of all who love the church of God, especially in the actual state of Christendom, and the sectarian habits of many saints. But notwithstanding endless variety in the circumstances, whether of individuals who present themselves, or of places large and small where meetings co-exist, there are landmarks of divine truth, which must be jealously maintained, if we would avoid the rocks of sectarianism or the shallows of independency.
In the case before us it is evident that the extremes of independency, clerical and radical, tight and lax, meet in the dislike of a central weekly meeting intended to promote the common action of the saints gathered to Christ's name, as in London. It is not only leading men who are restive if their views are challenged. Quite as impatient, or more so, are those who, conscious of feebleness, ever tend to strive after results by dint of private pressure, and the combination which diligently excited prejudice forms. Thence they fear to submit their proposals to the conscientious hearing of other brethren, though these have just the same interests and responsibility as themselves. If we have no confidence save in our immediate circle, the bond is already broken. No wise or faithful soul can trust those who only trust themselves.
Without grace it is impossible that this meeting or any other could flourish. When brethren are in a good state, it will be, as it has been, a great blessing; if they fall into the bitterness of party violence, it cannot but suffer greatly, but proportionately no more than every other meeting. If there be not love actively working and guided by the word of the Lord, the local proposals are sure to be faulty, perhaps worse; if brothers from the other meetings do not feel and act in the like subjection of grace, their suggestions can by of little worth, and may be mischievous. In both local and central meetings there are snares through unwatchfulness and other causes; as each if led of the Lord would contribute what the other might not so readily do to happy results. It is of all moment on the one hand that the exact knowledge of facts and persons which the local meeting should possess be fully appreciated; as on the other hand, if God has cast our lot where there are other meetings immediately concerned, the brethren are not to be envied who would forego the advantage of mature and close scrutiny that the decision be to the Lord's glory and the godly satisfaction of all who are called of Him to share it. He stands by His own order and is faithful to His promise. Were there but “two or three” in a place gathered to His name, they would in the sense of weakness wait the more on Him; but none the less would they count on His guidance and His full sanction. If they were two or three thousand, they would as truly need Him; but they would not slight His will that all saints in the city gathered to His name, whether in one or in twenty places, should carry out that will in unity according to His word. In order to do this not as a dead form but livingly, as all that concerns God's assembly is bound to be, suitable and sufficient means of knowing circumstances beforehand is requisite that they may act together, not in the dark but with holy intelligence.
A central weekly meeting is the only means as yet pointed out which ever commended itself widely to those who labor in the word and doctrine, or more generally to those who seek the edification and order of God's church. Other schemes have been proposed which seldom obtained credit beyond the originator or at most a knot of his friends. They fail, when examined, because more than one would involve sacrifice of divine principle, reducing common action from a reality to show if not worse; or else it would introduce a machinery even slower more cumbrous, and less satisfactory, than that which, whatever the defects, has served the interests of Christ and His saints for so many years.
There is no need to say more of the openly independent way, which desires simultaneous action in a place where several meetings coexist. Brethren in general are most decided against this ecclesiastical error. In ecclesiastical action to ignore other saints in the place, alike gathered to Christ's name, is to sin against the Lord and His word in foundation principles. Think of the apostle's indignation, if the church at Nymphas' had alone acted without securing the joint act of the assembly of Laodiceans! To obey the word of the Lord it was for the assembly in Corinth, and not merely for some of the saints in a particular quarter of the city, to put away from among themselves the wicked person. Only to notify the fact afterward gives up the practical unity of the saints in a place, and is quite consistent with the most rigid independency, especially if care were taken to make it known without the city as well as within. Nobody objects to notification outside if the reality and scriptural breadth of common action be maintained. But such a making known is mere information and apart from the question.
It has been suggested, however, to send all names proposed for reception or exclusion to the weekly central meeting, without bringing them before the gathered saints at the several meetings in the same city. But this, if a reality, would make the church unchurch itself, and invest the brothers' meeting with the authority which belongs only to the assembly having the Lord in the midst; and what could be more objectionable? It would thus supersede the church to constitute a clergy in the most dominant sense, if the brothers who met there, however wise or gracious, decided who should be received and who should be excluded. If they merely accepted without question the local proposals, where would be the value of such a meeting? For all in this case is really done independently; and there is not even the empty parade of notification. to the saints at large, for it is to save this that the central announcement weekly to a few brothers is supposed to take place. It is hard to conceive a plan more destructive of scriptural truth, whilst theoretically owning the Unity of the saints in a city, and the advisability of a central meeting every week. We may dismiss this as (like its predecessor) a giving up of the duty of the gathered saints in a city to act in unity, but (unlike it) erecting a novel ecclesiastical tribunal, which if real would be a nuisance, and if unreal a nullity.
But next, those who admit practical unity seek to meet or mitigate some objectors to the central meeting, by placing all the local meetings in direct communication, and acting in one without the intermediate meeting. How would this compromise work? Either as a show of unity without power, if there were no means of intermediate inquiry (and this it is the very design to extinguish); or if conscience were aroused by any self-evident irregularity, a dead-lock would be put on common action till a correspondence with the meeting that proposed the questionable course led to some satisfactory conclusion? The other meetings meanwhile would be kept in painful suspense, till they knew that the proposal was either quashed or corrected, if not carried out in its primitive integrity. In all probability, too, what excited doubts in one meeting might awaken anxieties in others; and so there might arise several distinct lines of objection leading to correspondence, to the great trial of the assembly proposing the action. The general tendency would be to foreclose questions and induce acceptance of dubious measures, to the very possible dishonor of the Lord and lowering of spiritual judgment all round, because of dislike to give trouble or of unwillingness to appear officious.
And why all this tedious, vexatious, and unsatisfactory beating about the bush? It is not only within the means but the only well-proved practice of brethren, for competent men from the various meetings in a place to meet matters face to face. There a fuller explanation makes evident in general the right or the wrong of the proposal. If wrong either in the substance or in the form, how happy for the local meeting to have not an alteration by authority, but a suggestion for revisal! For, if wrongly decided, a matter becomes dangerous, as it is a sin and shame. Defects are always possible. If mere clerk brothers come, or (lower than this) messenger youths to bring a notice and fetch the paper, whose fault is this? Of course one earnestly desires the wisest brothers, one at least or more, from the respective meetings (without hindering any); so as not only to state circumstances when a question arises, but to give grave and holy counsel according to scripture, and thus to promote the fellowship and godly common walk of the saints. Full blessing in any respect can only be where faith works by love; and in this central meeting wisdom and devotedness and humility are deeply called for.
It is quite a mistake that the central meeting necessitates any delay in reception or anything else. Thus, in places where there is but one meeting, it is usual to bring the name of one seeking fellowship before the brothers, whether at the close of the Usual prayer-meeting or at a meeting appropriated to such matters, with adequate testimony of those who have visited the person. If no objection lie, the person is proposed on the following Lord's day and received on the next. The central meeting does not interpose one moment's delay; for it intervenes on the Friday or Saturday evening before the proposal to communicate the case to all the saints gathered to the Lord in the place, if there be ever so many meetings. If delay occur, it is (as the rule) in the particular meeting whence the proposal emanates, rarely if ever from others without the strongest reason which no upright conscience could despise, and therefore carrying general conviction as imperative.
Further, still less does the central meeting even seem to hinder the full and happy liberty of the saints at any particular meeting in according fellowship to such as desire to break bread if thoroughly commended as sound and godly, who may have no intention at the moment of severing their ties with their old associations (one does not speak of those that are heterodox). Such cases do not properly come within the range of the weekly meeting, which simply, as far as this is concerned, takes cognizance of those proposed for reception, and in no way interferes with such as may break bread passingly: a privilege which brethren cannot deny without gainsaying their practice from the first and really changing divine principles. Nothing more clearly indicated beforehand the division now come than the unworthy evasion of duty in this respect, which was growing up for years, chiefly of course among those who compose the new party, but, one grieves to add, not confined to them. It was either narrowness of heart or unbelief, wherever it was found, and, I am thankful to say, to none more odious uniformly than to the late J. N. D., whatever may be the thoughts or ways of those who profess to follow him
Although familiar with the London Saturday evening meeting for many years, I never saw the least sound reason to question its propriety and value. Mistakes not a few naturally occurred in its course; and just corrections also followed as to composition, character, and working. Even in its least happy condition no local meeting ever repudiated it; and never was it in a more satisfactory and harmonious state than just before the recent party movement, which was wholly independent of it, though availing itself of all it could for its own ends, after the vain effort of Park Street against it. For years previously it never forgot its due relation to the assembly, usurping no function beyond its own and acting alike salutarily and without assumption, in aid both of the local meetings and of the saints as a whole, to glorify the Lord in unity, where so many occasions arise to perplex or dislocate, especially in an area of Christians so vast as that of London.
But even then jealousy, which in this division exceeded cruel wrath and outrageous anger, regarded with green eyes the desire to turn the weekly meeting to the best account. Local self-importance was wounded at finding that the brethren from all other parts of London wished (not through suspicion but in love and fellowship) to know every case for reception or exclusion as truly as if arising in their own particular meeting. Thus unity of action became full of interest and vitality. Such as loved not unity but independency resented anything but a bare acceptance of names or notices. Hence they sought to ridicule any approach to a real acquaintance with each common matter, as if it were “a Methodist class for relating experience “; and they vented their dislike more undisguisedly and fatally on the willing ears of an honored man abroad, that “certain people were having it all their own way at London-bridge.” The sound or suspicion of such a thing was intolerable; and confirmatory gossip soon prepared the way for the final effort. But the Saturday evening meeting resisted it, and would have done so longer, but itself got swamped by reinforcements, not only from the firebrands of the town rarely seen there before, but from the heated partisans of the country, in support of an independent and divisive course, due much more after all to the local meetings than to the central meeting even at its worst.
No argument then seems weaker, or less worthy of believers, than laying such a catastrophe at the door of the Saturday evening meeting. Given all manner of destructive forces, with a match for the train, and the explosion is sure. The fact is that the local meetings were far more defenseless and sent the inflammable material into the central one, and thus made the rupture inevitable. The Saturday evening meeting stayed the mischief for a long while, instead of precipitating it. And if there should arise anywhere such spirits at work with a similar end, and animated with a like will, division must ensue, with or without a central weekly meeting. An extraordinary crisis is no safe criterion: how did the meeting work habitually? I am satisfied that, for the ordinary walk of the saints with several meetings in a city, a central meeting, if duly supported from all parts, is of exceeding value for the godly solution of difficulties, with the least loss of time and the most effectual check on personal prejudice or local bias. If any can suggest a real correction on our past method truly and lovingly carried out, it will be welcome to none so much as those who feel that God guided in that meeting, and that the lack of it leaves a blank of great and real danger. Those who claim to go forward on the same divine ground as before can least afford to allow of change, natural as it is in a sect; and those who love and reverence the elder brethren who anticipated them in the path of Christ should beware of seeming even to their adversaries like a young and adventurous group of mariners at this time of day starting in quest of discoveries. By the grace of God I am one of those who dare not either retrograde or innovate, but would persevere, till Christ come, on the lines which I believe grace gave us to occupy for so many years, to the comfort and edification, the blessing and order, of the saints.
Ever yours affectionately in Christ, W. K.
To R. A. S.