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CHURCH AND STATE.*

"In a Christian Commonwealth, the Church and the State are one and the same thing.”—Burke,

TH

THE interests of the Church of Christ are the highest interests of man. Whatever tends to the good of the Church, tends to the good of man, in his noblest relations. Whatever harms the Church, does harm to man in the things that make for his everlasting peace. Therefore the condition of the Church is of the deepest possible concern to every Christian man. Again. The rulers of a nation have a high and solemn trust committed to them by God, the one only Potentate, the Lord of heaven and earth. This trust they must religiously discharge; and this they can only do by seeking earnestly, in every possible way, the good of the people over whom they are placed. The well-being of the people is, and always must be, dependent in a hundred ways on the conduct of those in power. Therefore the right notion of the duties of the Governor, and of the functions of Government, must always to every citizen be a matter of deep importance.

With these fundamental propositions, in some sense or other, we shall all, I suppose, concur. Nay, more, we shall all agree, that as every honourable citizen is bound to seek the good of the State of which he forms a part; so, and if possible in a still higher degree, every Christian man is bound to further the interests of the One Holy Catholic Church, of which he is a member, and in particular the interests of that especial branch of the one Church in which the Providence of God has placed him.

But when we come to consider more especially, first, in what way the interests of the Church may be most truly

The circumstances which have led to the insertion of this paper are explained in an editorial note at the end of the number.

served; and, secondly, in what way the duties of the ruling power may righteously be performed; a wide divergence of opinion takes place. And it is this divergence of opinion which constitutes the controversy as to the Union between Church and State. Into this controversy it is now my inten

tion to enter.

And first, since we know that half the controversies that ever raged were originated and maintained by a misunderstanding as to the interpretation of terms, I will state what I mean by the term Church. All Christians, I suppose, believe in the "Holy Catholic Church," and in the "Communion of Saints," in accordance with the faith of our fathers, written in the Word of God, and handed down from Apostolic times. Now I take it that "the Holy Catholic Church" means "the assembly of the called," "the Visible Church;" and that "the Communion of Saints" means on the other hand something quite distinct from this, namely, "the assembly of the chosen," "the Invisible Church." The former is allied to outward organization, to forms and laws; it is a means a divinely appointed means, to an end; and that end is the formation of the latter, the building up under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and by His power, of the spiritual temple which is the Body and the Spouse of Christ.

Now the opponents of the Union between Church and State often mean by "the Church," the "Invisible Church," the "Communion of Saints," and say with perfect truth that the Church, in their sense, ought never to be allied with the State, that (to use a simple illustration) the building up of a converted soul can scarcely be a part of the same operation with the sending an expedition to Abyssinia. If this were the question, no more need be said, and the controversy might be set at rest for ever. But this is not the question. We, who say that Church and State ought to be United, or rather that they are One, mean when we speak of the Church, that outward organization which is absolutely necessary for the performance of spiritual functions. And in this paper it is in this sense that I speak of the Church. What I speak of is an ecclesiastical system, and not "the Church of the Firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven."

And having defined at the outset the sense in which I mean to use the most important word in this controversy, I now pass on to prove the position which with regard to that controversy I take up. "That a nation of Christians ought to be a Christian nation, and that Christianity, and by consequence some definite form of Christianity, ought to guide the consciences and direct the actions of all the citizens of a State, not only in their individual courses, but in their corporate capacity." And this I propose to show

1st. From history.

2nd. From a true notion of the duties of Government as sanctioned by Holy Scripture, and practised by Christian rulers in all ages.

3rd. From an intelligent consideration of the circumstances of the present time, and of the benefits resulting from a Union between Church and State.

1st. The history of the earlier ages of the world, from the opening of the Book of Genesis to the close of the canon of the Old Testament, speaks in this matter with a strangely consentient voice-a voice so plain that no objections can lie against its utterance, but only against the inference to be drawn from that utterance to our present circumstances and requirements. I shall therefore only sketch, very briefly and rapidly, the course of Old Testament history, reserving to a future page the argument as to whether or no that history can be a pattern for ourselves.

One voice, I say then, speaks through all the sacred record. In Paradise, during the palmy days of our unfallen humanity, the one Ruler in all things was God. Man could then be trusted to do that which was right in his own eyes, and religion was a thing of course, a daily walk with God. Save in the counsels of eternity, there was then no Priest. Strictly speaking, there was no Church, no State; but the supreme head in temporal concerns, and the supreme head in spiritual concerns,

were one.

Again. In the Patriarchal age, it will, I think, be allowed by all, that the father of the family was its prophet, priest, and king. 'Noah," we are told, "builded an altar unto the Lord (Gen. viii. 20). And that Noah ruled his family, and was a

was.

"preacher (prophet) of righteousness," we know. Government, that is, political society, there was as yet none, at least among the faithful people of God; ecclesiastical system I believe there The late professor Blunt has most ably shown, in his "Scriptural Coincidences," the existence of a patriarchal Church, with priests, with places and forms of worship, with vestments and sacrifices; so that the Mosaic economy was nothing absolutely new, but a fixing, confirming, and completing of an old economy which had existed from the first. And in this Church it is important to remark that the ruler in temporal things (as far as there was any government at all), was also the ruler in spiritual things. Melchisedek, the king of Salem, was the priest of the most high God: and he is especially set forth by the Apostle as the type of Him who was the prophet, priest, and king to his people; the Divine Teacher (that is), the great High Priest, and the "Prince of Peace."

When Esau sold his birthright, he sold two things, the kingship and the priesthood. Isaac's blessing, as we know, gave to Jacob the dominion over his elder brother; and Jacob, as we also know, afterwards offered sacrifices to God, and received the promise. Esau, moreover, is accounted by St. Paul a profane person. And why profane,-but that he had forfeited his right to perform the sacred functions which devolved upon the eldest son? Is not the light thrown upon the whole narrative by these considerations, absolutely necessary to a satisfactory explanation of it?

Again. Moses, beyond a shadow of doubt, was the temporal as well as spiritual ruler of the chosen people. Under him we see the nation gradually becoming a political community. "Threescore and ten souls had gone down into Egypt," and as the "stars of heaven for multitude," they came up into the promised land. They were prepared for united national action as a State, so far, at any rate, as peace and war were concerned; and Moses was their head. They were prepared for a fixed and complicated ecclesiastical system, and this, too, Moses gave them. And yet not Moses, but Aaron, was the high priest to whom it belonged of right to perform purely spiritual functions; so that here, in my judgment, we have the perfect type of a community, where the head of the

Church is also the head of the State, and where, nevertheless, there is a special ministry duly consecrated and ordained to minister to the people in "things pertaining to God."

During the period of the judges, we are told, "there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes," but so far as there was any rule at all, the ruler governed in all things. Nothing seems to me much plainer than that as a matter of course the ruler had to care for the religious, as well as the civil and social well-being of his subjects.

In fact, we are told, in language clear and not to be mistaken, that judges were raised up for two distinct, though allied, purposes; first to restore, or endeavour to restore, the worship of the true God; and, secondly, to deliver the children of Israel out of the hand of their enemies (Judges ii. 16-19). And Samuel, in a single chapter (1 Sam. 7), is represented in all three functions of prophet, priest, and king. So that to sum up the evidence we have gathered from the history of the patriarchs and the judges, we may, I think, conclude without much hesitation, that it was in accordance with the will of God, that the temporal ruler of His chosen people should be also the head of the Church; nay, more, should sometimes even unite to these functions the office of the priesthood.

But if there should be possible a question whether, when "the Lord their God was their King," there was, strictly speaking, any temporal ruler at all, and from hence a doubt whether there was, in the modern sense, any union between Church and State; such question, or such doubt, must be for ever set at rest in the history of the kings. That history we need not linger on. From the time when "Saul said unto Ahiah, Bring hither the ark of God," and "built an altar unto the Lord," to the time when Solomon built and dedicated the Temple at Jerusalem; from the time when Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, "made Israel to sin" by introducing another worship than that of Jehovah (See 1 Kings xiii. 33), to the time when Josiah renewed the covenant of the Lord, and held the passover in Jerusalem; we learn that always the ruler of the nation was the ruler of the Church, and was held responsible

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