God great in His Church


God is ever within the Church. Therefore the greatness of the Church is God. Not her wealth, prestige, orthodoxy, culture, or intelligence, but His inhabitation.

I. He is her greatness as A LIVING FORCE — attracting, new-creating, enlightening, and teaching men; as her Vital Energy moving and moulding individual character and national life (where it is allowed free course) to the high ideal of the Perfect Life. Gold, like steam in the locomotive, rightly used and directed, is a power for good. Without it the machinery will be idle. It is indispensable to the aggressive activity and beneficent service of the Church, to the carrying out of her plans of operation, and for the accomplishment of her benignant purposes. "Bring the tithes into the storehouse," saith the Lord of Hosts. But let the Church try to draw her life from her wealth, and she will be strangled in the very attempt. God is her life — not national approbation and prestige. What the soul is to the body, He is to the Church. Her organization may be complete; on her roll of membership she may count the names of millions. She may look upon the nations as her friends. She may have the most stately buildings, the most exquisite architecture, music, and ritual; wealth may fill her coffers, eloquence may flow from her pulpits, scholarship, literature, and the sciences may flourish in her soil. She may spread herself until the melody of her bells shall tremble in the breeze of every clime, and the music of her songs and psalms shall be heard wherever man is found; yet, if God be not great in the midst of her, statue-like she is beautiful, but dead! All her action will be forced and mechanical, not the spontaneous outflow of life. "The Lord is great in Zion."

II. God in the midst of His Church is the greatness of her MORAL EXCELLENCE. Apart from Him humanity has no moral excellence, as apart from the sun there can be no vegetable life and fruitfulness, and no floral beauty. Every man is therefore morally excellent to the extent that he thinks, and feels, and acts like God. The true Church is in all her action consistent, dignified, noble. Her obedience is filial and faithful, and the glory of her supreme Head is her single and constant aim.

III. God is great in the Church as her INFALLIBLE TEACHER. The two books — Nature and Revelation — which He has put into her hands, with reverent intellect and devout heart she studies, seeking from Him the right interpretation thereof. She finds "tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." She finds no contradiction between the two volumes. And when "things hard to be understood" present themselves — seeming antagonisms and contradictions — she does not doubt, or dispute, or discard, but waits for "more light," knowing that the defect is in the reader, in the student, and not in the book.

IV. God in the Church is the source and secret of her STRENGTH. Every man is strong to the extent that he incarnates the Divine. God's thoughts actualized in man give sturdiness to moral muscle, firmness to the moral step, fixedness to moral purpose, a triumphing power to moral effort. Filled with God, omnipotence is man's strength. Therefore, as the individual soul's strength is proportionate to the measure of the Divine he incarnates, so is the strength of the Church. Her language has always been (Isaiah 12:2). The power which has sustained her hitherto shall not fail her in days to come. No weapon formed against her shall prosper. She shall never fail. The end of time and the destruction of earth will be but the dawning of her day — the beginning of her life in heaven. Ever closer will be her connection with the Infinite Father.

V. God being great in His Church, He is THE MOTIVE POWER OF HER ACTION — the highest reason for all she does.

(J. O. Keen, D.D.)

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