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THE
PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND REUNION

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONnON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YOBK
TORONTO MELBOUHNE BOMBAY
HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH
AND REUNION
PAPERS REPRINTED FROM THE
' CONTEMPORARY REVIEW '
BY
W. SANDAY, D.D., F.B.A.
LADV MAHGAHET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, OXFORD
CHAPLAIN IN ORDIWARY TO H.M. THE KING

OXFORD
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1913

PREFATORY NOTE
I HAVE been encouraged to think that the papers
which follow may be worth reprinting, partly as
a brief record of progress in the movement towards
Christian Reunion during the two not uneventful
years which their composition happens to have
covered, and partly perhaps for the sake of a few
lessons and suggestions that have been gathered on
the way. The gap that was interposed in the middle
of the series was caused by the postponement 'oi
the publication of the first volume of The Cambridge
Mediaeval History. This postponement, however, has
brought more material under consideration ; it has
given time to show what parts of the movement are
advancing and what are retreating ; and it has given
some opportunity to see which of the seeds sown
are most hkely to ripen. The papers as they were
written reflected the feelings of the moment ; but
I have not thought that they would be less interest
ing for that reason, and I have ventured to leave
them very much as they stood. It has occurred to
me that stray copies may perhaps reach a more
distant public than that which was originally con
templated ; and as one knows that our episcopal
titles are liable to change and are apt to be confusing
to those to whom they are not familiar, I have
substituted personal names which will be more
easily remembered. I have also added in square

6 Prefatory Note
brackets a few new notes and cross-references. My
best thanks are due to the editors of the Con
temporary Review for their kind permission to reprint
these articles.
These few words of preface had been dated
' Christmas, 1912 ', when the copy was sent to
the Press. But at the last stage of re-printing,
when the proofs were ready for final correction,
progress was suddenly interrupted by the not very
serious, but prolonged and disabling illness of the
writer. In this way the spring season was missed,
and publication has been unavoidably postponed
until the autumn. In the meantime many impor
tant events have happened, especially the meeting
of the two Scottish Assemblies in May, ratifying
the work of the Committees and authorizing them
to proceed, Mr. J. E. Mott's tour in the East, with
the systematic series of Conferences that took place
in connexion with it, and the quiet but steady
preparations for the great American Conference, of
which the date is still (wisely) left open. It would
be tempting to comment further on these events ;
but the little book bears already too many marks
of the different strata in its composition, and the
temptation must be resisted. SuflSce it to say, that
the general movement of things is, the writer hopes
and believes, wholesome and hopeful even beyond
his more sanguine expectations. W. S.
Christ Church, Oxford.
August, 1913.

CONTENTS

PAGE
The Movement towards Reunion . . 9

II
The Primitive Model  49
III
The Primitive Model {continued} . . . 83
IV
The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 113
Epilogue  136
Index  139

THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS
REUNION

1609 1509

THE movement TOWARDS REUNION
[April, 1911]
The times demand a solution, or at least some
nearer approach to a solution, of the perennial
problem of the Constitution of the Primitive Church
and the Origins of the Christian Ministry. There
is at this moment a conjunction of forces pressing
home this demand such as has never existed
before. First from the side of scholarship. For some
time past — in a more marked degree, we may say,
for the last thirty years — the little company of
scholars, ' sitting by their studious lamps,' has been
working, intermittently but with some insistence,
at this problem. EeaUy the series begins further
back stiU, with Bishop Lightfoot's famous disserta
tion on the ' Christian Ministry ' in his commentary
on the Epistle to the Philippians (published in
1868). But if I mention for this country. Hatch's
Bampton Lectures, delivered in 1880, with the
controversy which followed upon them, Gore's The
Church and the Ministry (1888), Hort's Christian
Ecclesia (1897), Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood (1897),
Wordsworth's Ministry of Grace (1901), T. M. Lind-

12 The Pfimitive Church and Reunion
say's The Church and the Ministry (1902), and Gore
again. Orders and Unity (1909) ; and if I recall in
Germany (to name only a few of the more important
books) Harnack's Analecta to his translation of Hatch
(1883), Loening, Gemeindeverfassung (1889), Sohm,
Kirchenrecht, vol. i (1892), Harnack again, art. ' Ver-
fassung (kirchliche) ' in Hauck-Herzog, Beal-Encyklo-
pddie (1908), since reprinted and translated — it will
be seen that the subject has been occupying the
minds of leading theologians.' But all that has
been in what may be called the normal course of
scholarly activity. The discussions have been fol
lowed with interest by the outside public ; but that
interest has not had about it anything specially
urgent and compelling.
Alongside of this work upon the theoretic problem
— a branch of Christian archaeology — practical states
men have had in view the practical side of the
question of Reunion. Five successive Lambeth
Conferences — High Councils, as they might be
called, of the whole AngHcan Communion — in 1867,
1878, 1888, 1897, and 1908, have had it before
them ; and in particular the Conference of 1888
pronounced upon it deUberately. It laid down the
four broad conditions on which the question of
reunion with other Christian bodies would be enter
tained. Many of us will remember the movement
which went on in the years 1894-6 towards
' [Some of these works are referred to in more detail on
pp. 51 ff. below.]

The Movement towards Reunion 13
a better understanding between the Enghsh Church
and the Church of Rome, It began with the active
fraternization between some leading French clergy
and prominent members of the Church of England.
Negotiations were opened at Rome, and for a time
seemed hopeful, but ended in disappointment. One
is glad to recall these memories, because they showed
the more chivalrous side of a section of the English
Church which has sometimes appeared in a different
character. We must take one thing with another,
and must be content if we can understand what it
may not be so easy to approve. The same year
(1896) which saw the defeat of the Anglican advances
towards Rome, saw the first fully constituted Con
gress of the Federation of the Free Churches at
Nottingham. This is another prominent landmark.
Reunion is sure to be accomplished piecemeal. First
one group combines and then another; and com
bination will take place in different degrees. Federa
tion is a step, and may be a large step, towards
a closer union. The amalgamation of the Free
Church and the United Presbyterians in Scotland
(1900) was an example of such closer union; and
the holding back of a portion of the former body
was less important in itself than in the financial
disturbance caused by the judgement in the House
of Lords. In 1907 three of the Methodist bodies
combined together under the shelter of an Act of
Parliament. And I believe that at the present
time some negotiations are going on between the

14 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Established Church of Scotland and the United Free
Church.' All these have been more or less movements
from above, though of course they could not have
been carried out without the full consent of the
community. The Pan- Anglican Congress was in
like manner initiated from above ; but the fact that
it could not end, and was not intended to end, in
any definite practical result, perhaps enhanced its
effect in generating popular feeling. I am speaking
of course of the Congress as distinct from the Con
ference of Bishops. The organization of this Congress
was in its way a new thing. No assembly of the
kind had ever (to the best of my belief) been pre
pared for so long beforehand or on so large a scale,
and with such effective measures for reaching con
siderable masses of people. The example thus set
was very soon followed, and in some respects bettered
in the following, by the World's Missionary Con
ference held at Edinburgh in the summer of 1910.
These two events together, the Pan- Anglican Con
gress and the Edinburgh Conference, from the vast
numbers represented, from the wide public to which
the interest of the meetings extended, as well as
from the magnitude and thoroughness of the pre
parations, constitute (I must needs think) a new
epoch in the history of Christian assemblies.
' [See below, pp. 118 if., and also p. 6.] My attention has
been drawn to a useful book, MeCrie's The Church of Scotland; her
Divisions and Unions (Macniven & Wallace, 1901). 1 am also

The Movement towards Reunion 15
And then the Edinburgh Conference has this
further significance, that it has not (so to speak)
ended with itself; it has not been wound up and
done with like most gatherings of the kind, even
(in a certain sense) the Pan-Anglican Congress.
But, in the first place, its history has been written
by Mr. W. H. T. Gairdner, in his book called ' Edin-
burgh, 1910' (Oliphant), in a way well calculated
to spread and keep aHve the interest. It is easy to
be wise after the event, but one can see now that
this is just what should have been done after the
Pan-Anghcan gathering. And beside this, it has
also set in motion a train of events which seems
likely to develop still further. My readers may
not all be aware of the events to which I refer, as
they have happened for the most part on the other
side of the Atlantic. But I will give some account
of them before I have done.
In the meantime I will take my start from the
new period which seems to me to have been in
augurated in 1908. And I will consider the trans
actions of this period especially in their bearing
upon the question of Christian Reunion. I will
take the two great gatherings together, because they
really hang together and bear testimony to the same
state of things. There was only this difference of
degree : in the Pan- Anglican Congress the question
of Reunion was only one subject among many ; and
informed that in Canada for some time back there has been
only one body of Presbyterians and one body of Methodists.

16 The Primitive Church and Reunion
nominally at Edinburgh it was only one subject
among a number ; but really at Edinburgh it domi
nated the whole assembly. I was not there myself,
and cannot speak from experience; but I gather
from all the accounts that have reached me that the
interest in Reunion absorbed every other ; it was in
the background of men's thoughts all the time.

This is the first point that I have to bring out,
the depth and strength of the desire for unity which
ran all through the Conference. It is a saying
attributed to Bishop Westcott, that reunion, when
it comes, will come from the circumference rather
than from the centre. And there is evidence on all
hands that the desire for unity is strongest in the
mission field and in the more thinly peopled districts
of our Colonies and of America. It is only another
example of a theoretic question being brought to
the front and emphasized by practical needs. The
nature of these needs will be illustrated shortly ;
but I must begin by speaking of the state of feeling
in the field of Missions. The growth of the spirit
of unity within this field is a very conspicuous
phenomenon. It is clear that in recent years this
spirit has advanced, it would be no exaggeration to
say, by leaps and bounds. The Secretary of the

The Movement towards Reunion 17
London Missionary Society, who had just been taking
a long journey throughout the Empire of China and
visiting not only the missions of his own Society
but a very large number of the missions of other
societies, reported to the Edinburgh Conference that
in all the missionary communities with which he
came in contact he found that this question of unity
was one of the most burning and one of the most
prominent, and also, from the point of view of those
who were joined with him in that deputation, one
of the most hopefnl {Report of Commission VIII,
p. 200). And the same kind of testimony came
from many other quarters.
The missionaries who flocked to Edinburgh came
with their minds full of this spirit. And the con
tagious effect of meeting and comparing notes with
others like themselves fanned it into flame. Even
one who does but read the accounts at a distance
cannot but see that the whole Conference soon
caught the glow. It was a unique experience in
the lives of those who took part in it.
What might be called the moral effect of the
Conference was summed up in felicitous language
by Sir Andrew Eraser, Chairman of the Commission
that was specially charged with the subject of
Co-operation and Unity :
We in our Commission and you in this Con
ference have surely had before you the vision of
unity, a vision fair and beautiful, far better and far
higher than anything we have dreamt of before.

18 The Primitive Church and Reunion
We have had that vision before us, a vision of that
which is perhaps afar off, and which is certainly
indistinct in its outHne, but which has laid hold of
our hearts, and we will never get rid of it. . . .
Even now it seems that the Spirit of God is pre
paring men in all sections of the Church for the
answer to that prayer [the prayer of St. John xvii].
We will await that answer patiently. It may be
that it wiU be long delayed, but meanwhile we will
keep this ideal before our minds constantly and
never forget it. We will endeavour in all our fellow
ship with our brethren of all sections of the Church
to be animated by brotherly love and forbearance
and never to be intolerant and arrogant; we will
endeavour in every respect gradually to seize every
opportunity of conference and co-operation, that we
may be brought in our work closer to one another,
and so closer to our Lord. — Report of Comm. VIII,
p. 190 f.
Nothing could be more admirable than the spirit
of mutual consideration shown on this Commission.
There was evidently the fullest desire to respect the
scruples of those who were hampered by reserves in
regard to it. Great as the Conference was, and vast
as were the numbers represented by it outside
(estimated at 150,000,000), it should be remembered
that it stUl did not include the whole of Christendom,
but only the smaller Protestant half of it. The
AngHcan Communion (including some 20,000,000)
should perhaps be considered apart as accepting that
designation only with qualifications.
Of its own natural impulse the Conference leaned
towards unity, and the visible feeling for unity was

The Movement towards Reunion 19
manifest aU through its deliberations. But even if
it had not been so minded of itself, the presence
of members of the native Churches would have
impelled it in that direction. One notable and
very encouraging feature in the Reports of the Con
ference was the excellence of the contributions made
by these native speakers. They certainly seemed to
have mastered the art of seven minutes' speeches
better than many Europeans. Here is a specimen.
Mr. Cheng Ching-Yi (the name is differently spelt),
of the London Missionary Society, said :
I count as one of the most gracious blessings that
God has bestowed upon the Church in China in recent
years the spirit of unity. Something has already
been done in the way of Christian federation, and
the result is at once practical and remarkable. It
is a great blessing for the Church in China to-day,
and it wiU be a much greater blessing for the Church
in the days to come. As a representative of the
Chinese Church, I speak entirely from the Chinese
standpoint. We may, and we may not, all agree,
but I feel it my duty to present before you the mind
of the Chinese Church as frankly as possible. The
Christian federation movement occupies a chief place
in the hearts of our leading Christian men in China,
and they welcome every effort that is made towards
that end. This is notably in the provinces of
Szechwan, Honan, Shantung, and Chihli. In edu
cational work, evangelistic work, and so on, the
Churches joined hand in hand, and the result of
this is most encouraging. Since the Chinese Chris
tians have enjoyed the sweetness of such a unity,
they long for more, and look for yet greater things.
They are watching with keen eyes, and listening

20 The Primitive Church and Reunion
with attentive ears, what this Conference will show
and say to them concerning this all-important ques
tion. I am sure they will not be disappointed.
Speaking plainly, we hope to see, in the near future,
a united Christian Church without any denomina
tional distinctions. . . . Such a union is needed for
these reasons : {a) Things that reaUy help the grow
ing movement of the self-support and self-govern
ment of the Church in China are welcomed. A
united effort both spiritual and physical is absolutely
necessary, (b) Speaking generally, denominational-
ism has never interested the Chinese mind. He
finds no delight in it, but sometimes he suffers from
it. (c) Owing to the powerful force of heathenism
from without, and the feebleness of the Church from
within, the Christians are compelled to unite in
building up a defence of the Church.
From the Chinese standpoint there is nothing
impossible about such a union. Such difficulties
as may be experienced will be due to our W^estern
friends and not ourselves. ... In China, and for the
Chinese, such a union is certainly desirable. China,
with all her imperfections, is a country that loves
unity both in national and family life. — Report of
Comm. VIII, p. 195 f.
It would seem to be the same speaker, who, in
another debate, after again urging that ' the problem
in China is the independence of the Chinese Church ',
adds the important qualification, ' reaUy there is
no independence of the Church. All Churches of
Christ are dependent first upon God and then upon
each other' {Comm. II, p. 352). It is interesting
to note that the native Chinese leaders are them
selves conscious of this. To have reached that point

The Movement towards Reunion 21
is to have travelled far on the road of Christian
experience and knowledge. And the foreign (Non
conformist) missionaries are also conscious of it.
For instance, the Rev. W. Nelson Bitton (of the
London Missionary Society), on the one hand, tells
us explicitly that :
Wherever Chinese young men are gathered to
gether and are talking concerning the things which
make for their national progress, you will find them
keenly interested in this question of the growth and
independence of the Chinese Church. They have
frankly stated their ideal to be a united Chinese
Christian Church, and it is idle for us to ignore,
and it would be foolish for us to oppose, that
national sentiment within the Christian Church,
because it is our duty as Christians to stand in line
with it.
But, on the other hand, he too goes on to add :
We do not want to see rising in China, or in a far
Eastern land, a far Eastern Church separated in
sympathy and in aim from the Catholic Church of
the Christian world. The danger which I have
spoken of is not one that is in the air or is remote ;
it is near, and it is pressing for immediate attention
{op. cit., p. 351).
Compare with this the very important warning
delivered on the same occasion by Bishop Gore
(p. 355). I shaU have to refer to this again later, as
it goes to the root of the main question before us.
It is a tribute to the solidity of character of the
Chinese that they are to the front in this matter of

22 The Primitive Church and Reunion
the organizing of a united native Christian Church.
At the large and representative Centenary Missionary
Conference at Shanghai, in 1907, it was unanimously
resolved that ' in planting the Church of Christ on
Chinese soil, we desire only to plant one Church
under the sole control of the Lord Jesus Christ,
governed by the Word of the living God, and led
by His guiding Spirit '. Next to China comes Japan ;
and here one is glad to think that the Anglican
Communion as a whole (American as well as British)
is already represented by a united native Church
with a native name (Nippon Sei Kokwai, ' Holy
Catholic Church of Japan '), which appears to have
been in existence since the year 1887 [Comm. VIII,
p. 97 ; cf II, p. 289). The Presbyterians have also a
complete organization, not only in China and Japan
but in India, where other partial attempts towards
union have been made, and where the national feel
ing is rapidly gaining strength.
Federations on a larger or smaller scale in con
nexion with Mission work are fast springing up all
over the world. The largest of all seems to be the
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America,
which held its first meeting in the city of Phila
delphia in December 1908, and includes within its
membership thirty-three Christian denominations
with a communicant membership of 17,000,000,
representing fully 50,000,000 of the population
{Comm. VIII, p. 210). I gather that a similar or
ganization exists in Canada. In any case the federa-

The Movement towards Reunion 23
tive spirit receives great support in the United
States and in the Colonies. In more than one
direction the vigour and energy of our American
and Colonial kindred seems inclined to sweep all
obstacles before it. A Canadian delegate, the Rev.
W. T. Stackhouse, D.D., a Baptist from Western
Canada, who caused some amusement by describing
himself as ' the longest man in the Convention ',
spoke in a breezy way of what he called real
Christian union :
The Christian laymen of Canada and the United
States are doing more to bring together the different
reHgious bodies than can be done by all the eccle
siastical Conferences that could be held during the
next hundred years. We are not simply talking
about union, we are actually doing the work in our
united relationship. I have been in the campaign
extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic, covering
something Hke one hundred places. Here we have
the various laymen representing the various deno
minations and the various Board Secretaries in
co-operation, and when these men speak from the
public platform you cannot tell one from the other
[op. cit., p. 227).
Mr. Gairdner tells us of one ' well-known delegate
from America ' who was prepared to go beyond this
and ' thought that aU the differences that divide the
denominations were so unutterably unimportant
that they might be made up into a mere appendix
to some handbook of common Christian teaching ;
and then [added] : "I suggest we follow the example
of modern science — cut out the appendix " ' (' Edin-

24 The Primitive Church and Reunion
burgh, 1910,' p. 207). I have not been able to identify
this speaker in the Report ; and it would not be fair
to take him as typical of more than the tendency
that exists among his countrymen. I cannot help
rather wondering what sort of figure this delegate
and his Canadian brother just quoted would make
if they were to undergo an examination in Church
history, or what they would say if they were to
extend their experiences from the New World to
the Old and to different circles in the Old. They
would there come in contact with types of Christi
anity far removed from their own, where it would
be only too easy to teU one from the other.
At the same time I am well aware that there is
a real and very natural foundation for the zeal of
men so situated in throwing off what they conceive
to be superfluous trappings. One of the best illus
trations of this was in a paper read at the Pan-
Anglican Congress by the Rev. H. J. Rose, of
the diocese of Sydney, Australia. Speaking of the
problem of Reunion, he said :
In this great continent of Australia, with its sparse
population and its vast areas of settlement, the
question is really crucial. I don't think this is
recognized either within or without the Church.
One goes to a little bush township, and this is the
reHgious equipment of the place : ' A Church of
England' (as the building is ludicrously called),
a Roman CathoHc, a Wesleyan, and perhaps a Pres
byterian or Congregational, place of worship. Under
stand, there is no kind of endowment, though each

The 3Iovement towards Reunion 25
of these * causes ' probably receives a small and pre
carious grant from a central fund. Otherwise each
shepherd of souls has to pick up what he can.
Needless to say, there is competition — not for spiri
tual influence only, but for bare sustenance. The
unhappy pastor's independence is compromised, his
spiritual and intellectual power is lowered by what
is practically a struggle for existence. The same
thing obtains everywhere, though, of course, it is
not so strongly marked. In my own parish, a com
paratively weU-to-do and not thickly populated
suburb nine miles from Sydney, we have two Con
gregational chapels, two Methodist chapels, and one
belonging to the Roman Catholics. Think of the
waste of energy, the inevitable pulling one against
the other, the almost inevitable bitterness which
these unhappy divisions engender. — Pan-Anglican
Congress Report, S. F. II. (e).
A touch of autobiography gives further point to this
vivid description, and shows why the conditions
were felt to be so gaUing. The writer had acted as
chaplain in the Boer War :
During practically the whole of the year 1900
I was a chaplain in South Africa ; part of the time
at Orange River, later with Sir C. Warren in Griqua-
land West, later still with Sir John French. Some
of my best friends during this period were the
Roman CathoHc, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan chap
lains. For four months we worked together in
perfect harmony in a great enteric hospital ; occa-
sionaUy it fell to my lot, in the absence of the
Roman priest, to minister to the sick and dying
of his Communion ; and when I was compelled to
be away from the hospital or columns, my friend
gladly took my place. There was no thought of
1501) D

26 The Primitive Church and Reunion
proselytizing. The De Profundis, the Kyrie Eleison,
the Lord's Prayer, were our common privilege, and
our common refuge was the Cross. It was the same
on the field. My friends were ready at all times to
help me in my work. Our strength for our special.
service, our influence vrith officei-s and men, were
doubled by the sense of unity. So was it with my
brethren among the Wesleyans and Presbyterians.
It happened that during most of my time I was the
only commissioned chaplain at the hospital or in
the division to which I was attached. Under these
circumstances I was able to be of some help to the
scripture-readers and other lay helpers, and my help
was warmly appreciated, and in various ways over-
flowingly reciprocated.
Necessity has no law ; and it is a happy thing
that it should sometimes override our most legiti
mate divisions.
The same writer touches the tender spot a Httle
later :
Is it too much to ask that, in certain cases at least,
a Dissenting minister should be asked to abandon
his Communion rite and be recognized as a Christian
prophet, with authority to preach, under certain
conditions, in our churches? I am stiU speaking
from a Colonial point of view. You can't have
reunion and, at the same time, rival altars, but it
does seem to me that if, in a given place, all Chris
tians could agree to join in the Supreme Act of
Woi-ship, other difficulties might wait for solution.
That is a very serious question to which I shaU
come back presently. But in the meantime the
state of things of which I have been speaking ¦wiU
explain the forward action described at Edinburgh

The Movement towards Reunion 27
by the Bishop of Gippsland (Dr. A. W. Prior), which
reaches the high-water mark so far as the relation
of the Church of England to other communions is
concerned. The Bishop's communication is sum
marized thus :
Some seven years ago the Presbyterian Church
of Australia addressed a letter — an historic letter —
to the Anglican Union of AustraHa and to other
Churches there, asking that an effort might be made,
by means of conference, in order to secure closer
union. 1 That letter is memorable from the fact
that, so far as I know, it is the very first instance
of an approach to the Church of England from any
of the bodies outside of it. It was read sympatheti
cally. In due course these two Churches, by their
representatives, met. In the years 1906 and 1907,
sessions of the Conference were held. . . . Upon
the first three points, the Holy Scriptures, the
Apostles' Creed, and the NiceUe Creed and the two
Sacraments, there was absolute unanimity in the
whole of that Conference, and when the difficult
question of Episcopacy came up, I am at least at
liberty to say that it was dealt with in a manner
which, to my mind, shadows forth, not only a
possible way of securing organic unity between these
two Churches, but the only possible way that can
be conceived. I am at liberty to say this also, that
when these conclusions were placed before the
Lambeth Conference two years ago, that Conference
did not go quite so far as our very warm-hearted
Conference did, but, nevertheless, it received
what was reported very sympathetically. We are
' 1 understand that similar advances have been made in
Canada, but that the Anglican Bishops did not think the time
ripe for direct negotiation.

28 The Primitive Church and Reunion
cautioned to make haste slowly, with great emphasis
on the slowly, but my impression is that if the
Church of England in Australia were able to act
independently — she has not, and does not want to
do so — our organic union might be secured in a very
short period, and I might add, without any sacrifice
of any kind of principle on either side. — Comm. VIII,
p. 228 f.i
It is doubtless a good thing that these negotiations
should have been held, and we can understand the
slight undertone of impatience which the Bishop
evidently feels at their not receiving more complete
recognition. Within the narrower horizon of his
own diocese and the neighbouring Australian dio
ceses such a state of mind is only natural. But
I am afraid that one who takes a wider view can
only endorse the caution of the Lambeth Conference
' to make haste slowly, with great emphasis on the
slowly '. I believe that this is the best advice that
can be given to the whole Anglican Communion
throughout the world.
At the Pan- Anglican Congress a warning note was
struck by Canon Stephen of Melbourne. Speaking
of the Church in Australia, he said :
There is a danger connected with our ecclesias
tical legislation which, at no very distant date, may
become serious. Our synods are composed of both
clergy and laity. The standard of theological educa
tion is not always very high. The feeling of fresh
ness and independence connected with a new country
^ The Bishop spoke to very similar effect at the Church
Congress at Cambridge [1910].

The Movement towards Reunion 29
causes an imperfect sympathy with tradition. Rever
ence for antiquity and appreciation of the importance
of historic continuity are not marked features in the
majority of our members, and as the number of
those trained in an English atmosphere naturally
decreases, there is a tendency to pay too little atten
tion to the teachings of the past. It is possible then
that, in a diocesan synod, a resolution or act may
be passed which is in conflict with the doctrine
or practice of the CathoHc Church. — Pan-Anglican
Papers, S. F. III. (h).
I believe that these words are true for the whole
of the New World, as compared with the Old — for
the United States as weU as for the Colonies. Of
course both in the States and in the Colonies there
are centres where the study of history is seriously
pursued and carried to a high degree of perfection.
But the historic sense is not so widely diffused as
to have got a real hold upon pubHc opinion ; and it
is apt to be lost sight of altogether in the impulse
to vigorous action which is so characteristic and so
easHy roused in the younger nations. I would be
far from suggesting that either the Bishop of Gipps
land or those who have acted with him ignored
history. But I do beHeve that history is in danger
of being ignored by the pubHc to which he more
immediately appealed ; and I am sure that, where
history is ignored, in the long run it will have its
revenge. After all, there are no short cuts in
matters of the greatest moment. Problems must
be worked out, and worked out from the very
beginning.

30 The Primitive Church and Reunion
The whole antithesis to the demand for what
I must call hasty solutions was summed up in
a momentous pronouncement by Bishop Gore at
the last Church Congress at Cambridge :
The proposition I would make is this — that the
Anglican Communion would certainly be rent in
twain on the day on which any non-episcopally
ordained minister was formally allowed within our
Communion to celebrate the Eucharist; and any
Colonial Church of our Communion which recog
nized in this way the validity of non-episcopal orders,
would either be disowned by other parts of the
Anglican Communion, or, if that were not the case,
would cause what I have just described as the
division within our Communion at home. — Report
of the Ch. Congress, p. 115.

II
I cannot pretend to minimize the shock with
which this pronouncement, when I saw it in print,
came to me as it must have done to many others,
and still more to those who heard it. I shall have,
before this course of papers is finished, to speak at
some length of the central expression on which the
whole turns. But at the same time I should wish
to recognize heartily the courage and resolute facing
of facts which prompted the utterance, and to
endorse the Bishop's belief that as a statement of
fact what he said is strictly and literally true.

Tlie Movement towards Reunion 31
There is what it is really not too much to call the
tragedy of the situation. There is an immense
desire for reunion the whole world over; and yet
as matters stand it must be felt to be impossible.
For I must needs admit that the Bishop's trenchant
words describe the deliberate attitude of the Angli
can Communion, especially at the home base in
England and — ^perhaps not quite so sharply, but yet
substantially — ^in America. The Historic Episcopate
is a recognized 'plank' in the programme of the
whole Communion, so far as that programme has
any public authorization. And all over the mission-
field, the presence of this ' plank ' has had a restrict
ing and limiting effect upon the relation of the
AngHcan to other communities. As we read through
the Edinburgh Reports, we constantly come across
the evidences of this :
The Societies at work are united in the Evan-
geHcal Union of the Philippine Islands, and have
divided the entire field among themselves. The
plan has worked so successfuUy that the Islands
have become dotted with churches which scarcely
know there is more than one Protestant Church.
The American Protestant Episcopal Church has not
formally joined the Union, but it has respected the
principles of comity and the division of territory. —
Comm. VIII, p. 14.
The Provincial Synod of Bishops in India is un
able to accept the views regarding territorial delimita
tion adopted by the Madras Conference (p. 17)*
The AngHcan Church has not seen its way to
accept the Arbitration Board, but apparently all the

32 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Missions at work in South Africa (except the Roman
CathoHcs) have given their support to the arrange
ments adopted by the Conference (p. 25).
In Japan the Missions are united in ' The Standing
Committee of Co-operating Christian Missions in
Japan ', on which practicaUy all the Societies at work
in the country, except the Protestant Episcopal
Church in America and the Society for the Propaga
tion of the Gospel, are represented (p. 35).
In Southern Central Africa there have already
been two meetings of the Nyasaland United Mis
sionary Conference. ... It is representative of all
the Missions at work in Nyasaland, except the
Roman CathoHc Societies and the Universities
Mission (p. 36). And so on ad libitum.
I confess that every statement of this kind that
I come to jars upon me. At the same time I bow
to the inevitable. I cannot blame the societies or
communities concerned, because they are simply
carrying out what may be presumed to be their
orders, the deliberate policy of the Church to which
they belong. And at the present moment I do not
see how that poHcy could be otherwise. A great
Church must act as a whole ; it cannot have its
individual members flying off at aU sorts of odd
tangents. But, while it so acts, the only temper
befitting it is one of austere gravity, self-reproach,
and contrition. The Archbishop of York at Cam
bridge spoke scathingly of certain members of our
Communion who, with the kindHest intentions,
behaved towards Nonconformists *as if they were
merely Christians in misfortune ! ' A hair-shirt would

The Movement towards Reunion 33
rather be the right attire for them. Do they re
member that it is by the narrowest of narrow shaves,
by the smallest of special providences, which hardly
involved any peculiar virtue in any one, that they
come to be in possession of that continuous succes
sion which other bodies lack? Dr. Briggs, in his
recent book on Church Unity, p. 91, says bluntly :
The accident or good providence that enabled the
Church of England to advance into the Reformation
with her Bishops at her head, does not entitle that
Church to lord it over other National Churches, or
to claim the only valid ministry in Protestantism.
And, whether that expresses the whole truth or not,
it is at least a wholesome reminder of what our
outward (and inward) behaviour ought to be.
And yet, with aU this humiliating consciousness
upon me, I cannot undertake to say, even as the
most private of private opinions, that the Church
of my aUegiance under present conditions is funda
mentally wrong. There is a difference between
episcopal and non-episcopal Churches : there is even
a shade of difference between Churches which can
point to an unbroken episcopate and those which
cannot. And round that one major difference a
number of minor differences revolve. These differ
ences constitute a real barrier that is not to be
removed by any short and easy process. We must
steadily aim at removing this barrier, but in the
careful, deliberate, and light-handed way in which

34 T'he Primitive Church and Reunion
(as Lord WilHam Gascoyne Cecil reminded his
Edinburgh audience) the wary bee-keeper gets at
his honey. Hasty and violent methods will simply
mean ruin.
There are special reasons why the Church of
England just at this moment is obHged to be more
than usually careful. The political, or semi-religious
and semi-political, controversies of recent years
have made opinion in the Church very sensitive.
It has conceived a perfect horror of everything
that can be labelled Undenominational. I believe
myself that this horror is exaggerated, that it blinds
people's minds to much that is of real value. But
in principle the instinct is a right one ; the sacrifice
of that which is distinctive is often just the sacrifice
of that which is in a sense most valuable, of the
special contribution that the Church or society has
to make to the fullness of the stature of the Body of
Christ. Suppose, writes the Bishop of Bombay (Dr. E. J.
Palmer), that the points on which we differ are
matters on which we ought to insist, are vital to us,
contribute to our spiritual life, are (as we believe)
capable of vitalizing others. Then how dare we call
them unimportant ? How dare we be content with
a reunion which neglects them? On this theory
of differences, the Greatest Common Factor basis of
reunion becomes untenable. — Comm. VIII, p. 114.
And Bishop Talbot was not less insistent upon
the necessity of aiming at richness and complete-

The Movement towards Reunion 35
ness rather than at the delusive simplicity which
comes of shallowness and forgetfulness :
Unity is, in fact, almost a synonym for the life of
the body of Christ. It is living, and not abstract ;
and has the fullness which belongs to life. True
unity then would express itself mentally in unity
of conviction ; morally, in unity of heart or feeling,
and of conduct or purpose ; and, structurally, in
unity of order ; unities aU of them containing
within them room for rich varieties of intellectual
method, of moral temperament, and of detailed
plan. It is an utterly defective view of unity,
which narrows it to any one of these. We stand
for the vital idea of unity as the one nearest to the
truth and fuUest in content {op. cit., p. 232).
And another consideration of great importance
weighed with the leaders of the AngHcan Commu
nion. They felt it their duty to keep open the door
for the entrance into the completed Unity of the
great Churches of the East and of the West.
Speaking of the first of these. Lord William Gas
coyne CecU said :
The great orthodox Church which reaches right
across Russia is one of the greatest powers of
Christianity in the future which has hardly wakened
up yet. Anybody who has studied the great Russian
country wiU bear me out in saying that that is one
of the great powers of the future, and you cannot
take any strong action until that Church is repre
sented (p. 210).
And in like manner Bishop Talbot laid down
that :

36 The Primitive Church and Reunion
If, indeed, ' only one Church of Christ ' is to be
founded in new countries, the unity must com
prehend the great communion of Rome as well as
the great Church of the East (p. 233).
However distant any such consummation must seem
under present conditions, the amiable and truly
Christian language quoted from Archbishop Nicolai
of Japan, Bishop Bonomelli of Cremona, and an
unnamed Professor referred to by Mrs. Romanes
(pp. 4, 220-3, 225) is evidence enough that there
are forces at work that may bear fuller fruit in the
future. And any one who is familiar with the
learned literature of either the Greek Church or
the Latin wiU be able to confirm this impression.
The point at which the problem becomes most
urgent is, no doubt, in relation to the young native
Churches. It was this that Bishop Gore evidently
had in his mind when he so earnestly entreated
those Churches to think out fully their conception of
the Church before they tried to put it into practice.
And this is a matter in which the foreign mission
aries must help them.
If we, as foreign missionaries, are to hand over
Christianity to the Church of China, and Japan,
and India with a good courage, then we must have
done more than at the present moment we seem,
I think, inclined to do, to contribute to a definition
of what the Church is, the definition of its essentials
or real Catholic features. ... I am quite certain
that no system, no reHgion, no body can hope to
stand unless it undergoes the painfiil intellectual

The Movement towards Reunion 37
effort of defining what its principles are. To run
away from that obligation is to run away from
something which is essential for continuous corporate
life. — Comm. II, p. 355.

Ill
The pace at which events move, especiaUy in the
Western Hemisphere, is formidable. Only within
the last few days (January, 1911) there has reached
me from the other side of the Atlantic a summary
account of a ' Joint Commission appointed to arrange
for a World Conference on Faith and Order.' All
that has happened is since the date of the Edin
burgh Conference. The initiative has come from
the Episcopal Church in the United States. I believe
that, if we were to go behind the scenes, it would
be found that the first suggestion came from a
single enthusiastic and influential missionary bishop
in that communion. It fell on prepared ground,
and was eagerly and actively taken up. The
General Convention of the Episcopal Church held
its triennial meeting at Cincinnati in the month of
October, 1910. In accordance with a resolution of
the House of Deputies, a Joint Committee was
appointed to consider a proposal laid before them,
and this Committee reported as follows :
Your Committee is of one mind. We beHeve
that the time has now arrived when representatives

38 The Primitive Church and Reunion
of the whole family of Christ, led by the Holy
Spirit, may be wiUing to come together for the
consideration of questions of Faith and Order. We
believe, further, that all Christian Communions are
in accord with us in our desire to lay aside self-will,
and to put on the mind which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord. We would heed this call of the Spirit
of God in all lowliness, and with singleness of
purpose. We would place ourselves by the side
of our feUow-Christians, looking not only on our
own things, but also on the things of others, con
vinced that our one hope of mutual understanding
is in taking personal counsel together in the spirit
of love and forbearance. It is our conviction that
such a Conference for the purpose of study and
discussion, without power to legislate or to adopt
resolutions, is the next step toward unity.
With grief for our aloofness in the past, and for
the other faults of pride and self-sufficiency, which
make for schism ; with loyalty to the truth as we
see it, and with respect for the convictions of those
who differ from us ; holding the belief that the
beginnings of unity are to be found in the clear
statement and full consideration of those things in
which we differ, as well as of those things in
which we are at one, we respectfully submit the
following resolution :
WHEREAS, there is to-day among all Christian
people a growing desire for the fulfilment of our
Lord's prayer that all His disciples may be one ;
that the world may believe that God has sent Him :
Resolved, The House of Bishops concurring. That a
Joint Commission be appointed to bring about a Con
ference for the consideration of questions touching
Faith and Order, and that all Christian Communions
throughout the world which confess our Lord Jesus
Christ as God and Saviour be asked to unite with

The Movement towards Reunion 39
us in arranging for and conducting such a Con
ference. The Commission shall consist of seven
Bishops, appointed by the Chairman of the House
of Bishops, and seven Presbyters and seven Laymen,
appointed by the President of the House of Deputies,
and shaU have power to add to its number and to
fill any vacancies occurring before the next General
Convention. On October 19 this resolution was adopted unani
mously by both the House of Bishops and the
House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, and the
members of the Commission were nominated —
seven Bishops, seven Presbyters, and seven Lay
men. The Hst of Bishops includes Dr. C. H. Brent
of the Philippine Islands and Dr. D. H. Greer of
New York.
While the General Convention of the Episcopal
Church was sitting at Cincinnati, the National
CouncU of the Congregational Churches was holding
its convention at Boston. At this meeting a vote
was passed ' That in view of the possibility of fra
ternal discussion of Church Unity suggested by the
Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1908,
a special commission of five representatives be
appointed to consider any overtures that may come
to our denomination as a result of this Conference.'
This vote was duly communicated to the Cincin
nati Convention ; and the five members of the
Commission were named, headed by Dr. Newman
Smyth of New Haven.
It is important to give the draft of the Report of

40 The Primitive Church aud Reunion
this Congregational Commission, because it takes
up the last Lambeth Conference and is practically
addressed to the Bishops of the Anglican Com
munion. The draft report is as follows :
WHEREAS, the last Lambeth Conference of the
Bishops of the Anglican Communion, which was
held in London in 1908, lifted up the ideal of Church
unity in these words : ' We must set before us the
Church of Christ as He would have it, one spirit
and one body, enriched with all those elements of
divine truth which the separated communities of
Christians now emphasize separately, strengthened
by the interaction of all the gifts and graces which
our divisions now hold asunder, filled with all the
fullness of God. We dare not, in the name of peace,
barter away those precious things of which we have
been made stewards. Neither can we wish others
to be unfaithful to trusts which they hold no less
sacred. We must fix our eyes on the Church of
the future, which is to be adorned with all the
precious things, both theirs and ours. We must
constantly desire not compromise, but comprehen
sion, not uniformity, but unity.'
AND WHEREAS, the Anglican Bishops further
recommend that for this end conferences of ministers
and laymen of different Christian bodies be held to
promote a better mutual understanding ; and we,
on our part, would seek, as much as lieth in us, for
the unity and peace of the whole household of faith ;
and, forgetting not that our forefathers, whose orderly
ministry is our inheritance, were not willingly separa
tists, we would loyaUy contribute the precious things,
of which as Congregationalists we are stewards, to
the Church of the future ; therefore this Council
would put on record its appreciation of the spirit

T'he Movement towards Reunion 41
and its concurrence in the purpose of this expression
of the Lambeth Conference ; and voice its earnest
hope for closer fellowship with the Episcopal Church
in Christian work and worship.
Both of these seem to me, I confess, to be singu
larly Christian documents. A notable feature about
them is their manliness — the simplicity and direct
ness with which they are expressed, and the genuine
feeling that lies behind them. It is always a fine
spectacle when a strong man meets his brother with
outstretched hand, and with the frank acknowledge
ment that he has been in the wrong. It seems to
me that this character is impressed on all the move
ment that has taken its impulse from Edinburgh,
but especiaUy on this American branch of it.
As yet the only two bodies publicly involved are
the Episcopalian and the Congregational. But the
feeling in America (in Canada as well as the United
States) is evidently so strong that the other leading
bodies may be expected soon to come in.
The subject (' Faith and Order ') proposed for the
' World Conference ' becomes a little less staggering
when it is taken as interpreted by the so-called
'Lambeth Quadrilateral' of 1888. It will be re
membered that the four heads were :
' 1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament, as the Revealed Word of God.
' 2. The Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement
of the Christian Faith.
* 3. The two Sacraments — Baptism and the Supper

42 The Primitive Chtirch and Reunion
of the Lord — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's
words of institution, and the elements ordained by
Him. '4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in
the methods of its administration to the varying
needs of the nations and peoples called of God into
the Unity of His Church.'
I understand that it is not proposed that the
Conference should ' expatiate free ' over the whole
field of Christian doctrine, but only that the Con
ference should consider how far the different bodies
represented can agree to unite on the four points
specified. Still I would venture to urge that the
earliest date contemplated should be the year 1915.'
This would be in convenient time for the next
Lambeth Conference ; and I do not in the least
believe that the materials involved could be got
into shape before. For the process of preparation,
if it is to be at all thorough, cannot be a short
one. The most vulnerable point in the proposal as it
stands — unless, indeed, we are to read a good deal
between the lines — is the method of discussion. We
hear only of a ' World Conference ', and of ' taking
personal counsel'. But wholesale methods of this
kind can only bring to a head what has been threshed
out beforehand. A World Conference cannot verify
references or work out problems of close detail.
The real preparation must be by means of books,
' [I am glad that we need not think even of this : see p. 116.]

2'he Movement towards Reunion 43
or by Reports on the scale of books. My own belief
is that the most important steps will have to be
independent of the great Conference altogether.^

IV
Indeed, it seems to me that the right mode of
proceeding has been already indicated by a states
manlike son of my own University of Oxford.
Dr. E. J. Palmer, at present Bishop of Bombay,
before taking up that office, had acted for some years
as Chaplain and FeUow of BalHol College. He had
played a yeoman's part in organizing the Pan-
Anglican Congress. His experience in connexion
with this (I do not know how long the idea had
been present to his mind before) had turned his
attention strongly to the question of Reunion. He
went out to India with this much in his mind ; and
soon after his arrival (on May 13, 1909) he read
a paper to a Missionary Conference held at Maha-
bleshwar. In this paper, with his accustomed terse
ness and force, he went straight to the point of
what I too believe to be the central issue in the
whole matter.
I am going to concern myself to-night with ideals.
I am not going to take up the question of the next
steps towards reunion. There is a more important
thing in life than next steps. It is the governing
' [On the Conference on Faith and Order, see pp. 116, 136 f.]

44 The Primitive Church and Reunion
idea. . . . One of the commonest forms of a govern
ing idea is what we know as the ideal. If there is
a great change coming in the action of a generation,
it will be preceded by a change in ideals. I say
that we have for some centuries held ideals of Church
polity which steered us away from reunion. If this
generation is going towards reunion, there must be
a change in ideals somewhere. — Reunion in Western
India, Bombay, 1910, p. 4.
This paragraph — or so much of it as I have quoted
— really deserves to be written in letters of gold.
It seems to me to give the key at once to the mis
takes that have been made in the past and to the
best hope that we have for the future. Hitherto we
have had far too much about ' next steps ', and too
little about ' the governing idea '. What we are
caUed upon to do now is to concentrate our attention
closely upon this. And that must be done, not for
the time at least in general public debate, but by
students and scholars working in their studies and
among their books. This is the first indispensable
stage ; in it there are no short cuts ; and the process
must not be hurried.
And yet I am not sure that even the Bishop of
Bombay himself is not a little by way of confusing
the two things. I am not sure that, even for him,
the governing idea does not almost become a next
step, so eager is he to embrace it.
When the Bishop went down from Oxford to take
up the work of his diocese, he made an impressive
appeal to the Universities — not quite directly, but

The Movement towards Reunion 45
in a sermon preached to a special audience of Under
graduates. The point which at the present time is of the
greatest difficulty in regard to the reunion of the
bodies which form the vastly greater and most
national part of our British Christianity is Episco
pacy. Now it is impossible to reach any agreement
on this point while the present divergence of his
torical opinion as to the origin of Episcopacy and
of Holy Orders in general exists. ... It lies with
men who can be content to retract their own past
asseverations, if they turn out untenable, who are
wilHng to approach the question in the spirit of
scientific history, who can die to themselves, their
opinions, and, if they are unhappy enough to belong
to one, their party, and give themselves up to the
truth — ^it lies with such men, I say, to provide a
basis for reunion, by studying over again the whole
question of the origin of Episcopacy, with its bear
ings on the validity of Ministry and Sacraments,
and by presenting to the Church a dispassionate,
scientific, scholarly statement on the whole subject.
If such men can be found anywhere, it should be
in the Universities. I call upon the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge to set themselves to the
task, and to complete it in four or five years, that
the book may be in the hands of all those through
out the world who are longing for union, and that
it may be weU discussed and digested Ibefore the
next Lambeth Conference. — Parting Words, Oxford,
and London, 1909, pp. 14-16.
There foUows a broadly sketched scheme for a work
in three parts, which the Bishop rightly believes
'would take an important place in the foundation
of the great edifice of reunion '.

46 The Primitive Church and Reunion
The Bishop knows enough of learned work to be
aware that ' four or five years ' is a sanguine estimate
of the time that a work planned on such a scale
would involve. But he appears to have jumped to
the conclusion that his whole appeal had fallen upon
deaf ears. He referred to it in his recent reprint
of papers connected with Reunion in Western India.
He says (p. 68) :
At the end of 1908 I had the temerity to appeal
to the Divinity Professors of Oxford and Cambridge
to provide our Church before the next Lambeth
Conference with a scientific reconsideration of the
questions of the origin, history, and validity of Holy
Orders, and of the validity of Sacraments. The
Professors, as far as I know, for different reasons,
declined the task.
How does the Bishop know this, and what did
he expect? Did he expect to receive replies from
all the Professors by return of post, saying that they
would at once put aside all their other tasks and
meet in conclave to apportion the work among
themselves? I need hardly say that this is not
quite what really happened.
Let me take my own case, which perhaps is fairly
typical. The Sermon, as I have explained, was not
addressed to the Professors. It was not printed
until some little time after its delivery. The printed
copies are dated 1909, and it was some way on in
that year before I became possessed of one. It did
make a serious impression upon me ; but I was

The Movement towards Reunion 47
busy with other things ; I had not touched the
subject of the Ministry for something like ten years ;
and, much as I felt the force of the appeal, it could
only for the time lie dormant in a corner of my
mind. It is really the Edinburgh Conference that
has called it up again. And again, as I have said,
I was not present in person ; it is only echoes of it
that have reached me. The official Reports have
only been in my hands a very short time. A kindly
invitation from the Editor of the Contemporary
Review came to me at an opportune moment ; and
I am impelled to take up my pen and try to do
what I can.
For I really believe that something can be done.
I reaUy believe that historical science has a word
to say — not that Professors, the world over, are
deUberately taking up the subject of the Episcopate,
with a view to supplying a basis for Reunion, but
that in the regular course of disinterested historical
inquiry a point has been reached at which there
seem to me to be hopeful openings and hopeful
auguries. That is how matters stand ; and I must try, in
the two papers that are to follow, to explain what
has led me to this opinion. I am afraid that what
I have to offer will be some way from satisfying my
good friend the Bishop ; but my readers will perhaps
accept it for what it is.

THE PRIMITIVE MODEL

II
the primitive MODEL
[May, 1911]
We owe especiaUy to Dr. Moberly the warning
that in any discussion as to the origins of the Christian
ministry (as, indeed, on any subject of importance) it
is necessary to be quite clear as to the presupposi
tions under which the argument is conducted. I
think it may be said that, since that warning was
given, it has been generally borne in mind by those
who have taken part in the discussion. They have,
at least, let it be seen quite frankly what is the point
of view from which they themselves have approached
the subject.
Dr. Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood was published
in 1897 ; and the same year, but a Httle earlier in the
year, saw the posthumous appearance of Dr. Hort's
lectures on The Christian Ecclesia. The interval was
sufficient to aUow of the introduction into the later
work of a considerable Note dealing with the earlier
{Min. Pr., pp. 22-9). The lectures had been delivered
as far back as 1888-9. And it is true that the
methods and habits of mind that found expression
in the two books are so different that what has just
been said might seem not to hold good of Dr. Hort's

52 The Primitive Church and Reunion
volume. The warning as to presuppositions was
uttered, in the first instance, with reference to Bishop
Lightfoot's famous dissertation in his Commentary on
Philippians (1868) ; and in this connexion it has been
generaUy admitted to be in place. Bishop Lightfoot
was primarily a scholar, and his simple piety was not
perplexed by subtleties of phUosophical thinking.
In this his Cambridge colleague differed from him ;
but they had in common the habit of approaching
questions raised in the field of theology largely from
the side of exegesis. Dr. Hort never shrank from
the examination either of assumptions or of con
sequences, though he did not always lay the results
of his examination upon the table, neither did he
always succeed in making his deeper meaning clear
to his readers. But, while he approached his subject
(as I have said) mainly from the side of exegesis, and
that the exegesis of detached passages taken one by
one, he was exceedingly cautious as to the drawing
of general inferences, and especially cautious as to
reading into a passage more than it contained ; he
would not have been so much on his guard against
inferring from it less than he might have done.
Dr. Moberly's whole type of mind and processes of
reasoning were so fundamentally different that we
can hardly be surprised at their not getting properly
into touch with each other. And the same kind of
explanation accounts even more completely for the
criticisms on Dr. Hort in the later editions of Bishop
Gore's TJie Church and the Ministry (I quote from

The Primitive Model 53
ed. 4, 1900) ; in this case the differences of method
and mental habit are very great indeed.
The difference between Dr. Hort and Bishop Gore
is the difference between a mind essentially critical
and a mind essentially dogmatic. In like manner
Dr. Hatch, in reviewing Liddon's famous sermon at
the consecration of Bishop King {Contemporary
Review, June, 1885), found in it no less than 'six
assumptions', which seemed to him to be unwar
ranted. It was replied, not ¦without reason, that
a sermon must make assumptions, that it could not
pretend to prove everything ab initio. But, really, the
assumptions complained of were generally current,
and had existed in a more or less stereotyped form
since the end of the second century. It was really
in criticism Hke that of Hatch and Hort that there
might be discerned the breath of a new spirit,
the more modern spirit that calls itself ' science '.
I would not deny that in the earlier manifestations of
this spirit as it appears in the writers named, and
especiaUy when it is looked at from the point of view
of one in search of dogmatic principles, there might
well seem to be an element of exaggeration. Hatch
was a thorough modernist, and his modernism took
a form akin to that of natural science; he was always
looking out for natural analogies ; and his method
might be described as building up piecemeal ' from
below'. On these lines he did a great deal of
excellent work in its way. Hort was not exactly
a modernist ; he had a larger background (which he

54 The Primitive Church and Reunion
would not have disowned) of phUosophy, if not of
dogma ; and he was not out of sympathy with ancient
modes of thinking. But a more scrupulous investi
gator can have hardly ever lived ; he had the keenest
eye for differences and logical extensions ; he would
avoid like poison a statement that seemed to be in
excess of the evidence. And when he had once
arrived at a restricted conclusion, the restriction
would be apt to cling to him, even where it was less
clearly justified. There were obvious openings for
disagreement here with a mind like Dr. Gore's, some
what impatient of fine distinctions, and fond of bold
affirmations of principle.
Really both books, Dr. Hort's and Bishop Gore's,
fall above the chronological line (1897) from which
I started ; but the statement made at the outset is,
I believe, broadly true. Dr. Gore and Dr. Moberly
— as representatives of Anglicanism, and in many
ways of the stricter Anglicanism- — leave no doubt as
to their position. On the Nonconformist side, the
most important works that have appeared during the
period are Dr. T. M. Lindsay's Cunningham Lectures
for 1902, Tlie Church and tJie Ministry in the Early
Centuries (ed. 4, 1910), and a group of detached papers
by Dr. Vernon Bartlet, of Oxford [articles in The
Contemporary Review for July, 1897, August, 1898
(with A. J. Carlyle), April, 1902 ; in The Churchman
for June, 1909 ; and the chapter on ' Organization
and DiscipHne ' in The Apostolic Age (Edinburgh,
1900), and a paper read at the Third International

The Primitive Model 55
Congregational Council (1908)]. Dr. Lindsay writes
as a Presbyterian, and Dr. Bartlet as a Congrega
tionalist. In both cases the standpoint is very clear,
and (in Dr. Bartlet's especially) followed out in close
detail. Within the last three years valuable help has come
from Germany. First, an elaborate article by Harnack
on ' Verfassung (kirchliche) ' in Hauck-Herzog, Real-
encyklopadie f prot. Theologie u. Kirche, Band xx
(Leipzig, 1908) ; reprinted with additions, 1910, and
now accessible in an excellent English translation
in WiUiams & Norgate's Crown Library (1910).
Between the article and the reprint a paper, entitled
' Wesen und Ursprung des Katholizismus ', by
Rudolph Sohm — the author of the well-known and
standard work Kirchenrecht (Band i, 1892) — was
read and published in the Transactions of the Saxon
Academy of Sciences (PhUol.-Hist. Klasse, Band
xxvii, No. 10), This paper was largely a criticism
of Harnack, though the two writers have much in
common which is duly acknowledged on both sides ;
and Harnack repHed at length in the reprinted
volume (this reply is included in the E.T.). The
rather strange and isolated position taken up by
Sohm is stated with great precision, and can leave
no one in doubt. Harnack is also well known as
a lucid writer ; and, although he does not formally
cross-examine himself, he too is quite sufficiently
explicit. He is before aU things an historian, and he
treats his subject historically. I propose to concern

56 The Primitive Church and Reunion
myself in the present paper chiefly with these two
writers, with a certain amount of retrospect and
comparison ; in a future article I hope to bring
another writer into view, whose work is not yet
generally accessible.

I doubt if there is any older scholar to whom the
history of the Christian ministry owes more than
it does to Harnack. His translation of Hatch's
Bamptons (1883) contributed in the form of appended
' Analecta ' matter of its own that was valuable in
its way. But this was really of less importance than
the editions of early documents (the Didache and the
so-called Apostolic Church Ort^er-) which appeared in the
Texte u. Untersuchungen three years later. Both these
editions were much more than the mere publication
of texts. Harnack was, I believe, the first to grasp
the full significance of what is now commonly called
' the charismatic' as compared with the local ministry
— that is, the extraordinary ministry arising from
the exercise of the so-called ' spiritual gifts ' as
distinct from the regular official executive of the
local churches. This was, indeed, clear enough
from many passages of St. Paul's Epistles, especially
1 Corinthians xii-xiv ; but the discovery of the Didache
helped conspicuously to throw it into relief and to

The Primitive Model 57
set it in its true place in the historical order of
development. With his usual quickness of appre
hension Harnack saw this at once, and described
the position with so much force that retrograde
movement on the point was made impossible. The
examination of the history of the office of ' Reader '
attached to the second essay was another solid
contribution on a point of typical importance. In his
highly suggestive book. The Expansion of Christianity
in the First Three Centuries (E.T., ed. 1, 1904-5 ; ed.
2, augmented, 1909), he returned to the subject.
And now he has reviewed it systematically in a
dictionary article which is a model of comprehen
siveness and conciseness.
The first thing that strikes us in this article is the
growth and development of the author's mind since
he first began the study of the question. No leading
theologian of this generation has shown more candour
and open-mindedness than Harnack ; and the con
sequence is that movement with him has been all in
the right direction. He has described it himself as
in many ways a ' return to tradition '. Not a few of
his own countrymen have reproached him for this ;
but we in this country have foUowed his career with
increasing sympathy and admiration. It has seemed
to us to be just what was needed, a gradual stripping
off of the hypercriticism that had become too fashion
able and a deepening of reHgious interest and insight
in equal proportion. Harnack is always living and
human ; he is not overweighted by his vast learning ;
1609 H

58 The Primitive Church and Reunion
he is imaginative without being extravagant, and his
grasp of positive truth is not weakened by chilling
scepticism. These qualities seem to me to be present in a
high degree in the volume of which I am speaking.
And the advance in them is clearly marked. I
wonder how far the author himself is conscious of
it. I do not notice much of the nature of retracta
tion or self-correction ; and yet there is a good deal
of difference in the emphasis on different points,
and especially on the positive side as compared with
the negative. This comes out when we place the
new volume by the side of the first in the series,
the translation and discussion of Hatch.
At that stage Harnack was engaged in an eager
study of the surroundings in which Christianity
had developed. He was apt to catch at the analogies
in pagan religion ; and the attention paid to these
was part of the attraction that Hatch's work had
for him. He wrote in his Preface to the trans
lation :
The safe starting-points for the investigation of
the constitutional relations of the churches in anti
quity were found by the author, not in the history
of doctrine, but in the social and political position
of the communities in the Roman Empire, or rather
in the changes which they underwent. The designa
tions of the different offices which came up graduaUy
in the Church are examined by him in accordance
with a strict method ; by comparing them with the
similar designations of contemporary offices outside

The Primitive Model 59
the communities and obtaining by a complete induc
tion a clear picture of the situation of the churches
in the different centuries, he arrived at conclusions
that were already fixed before he went on to the
interpretation of the literary sources, on which in
the past the most important decisions had been
made to depend.
This method is, of course, not wholly discarded,
but at the same time different language is used
about it. For instance, in such passages as the
following :
We must therefore accept with the greatest caution
the theories that ancient Christian institutions are
to be carried back to the heathen religious societies ;
recourse to such an explanation as this is more
appropriate in the face of later conditions {Constitu
tion, &c., p. 89).
The latest detailed treatment of* the influence of
the Roman politico-religious organization (emperor-
worship) on the organization of the Church is given
by Liibeck. Desjardins, Barthelemy, Monceaux,
and Perrot have maintained that from the beginning
the influence was far-reaching, while the opposite
view has been upheld by Beurlier and Duchesne.
I am unable to perceive any trace of this influence,
except some involuntary, though not unimportant,
developments on the Christian side, which may be
traced to analogy (the worship of the emperor was
built up on the division of the empire into provinces)
(p. 164, n.).
In the development of the organization of Gentile
Christianity, the heathen religious societies, the
poHtico-religious organization of the empire, the
municipal and provincial organization, and lastly,
though perhaps only in certain localities, the orga-

60 JVie Primitive Church and Reunion
nization of the philosophical schools^ — all these had,
strictly speaking, only so much influence as they
exercised unconsciously — an influence, too, of which
the Gentile-Christian communities in their progres
sive development had not the least suspicion. The
churches (or in some cases particular circles in them)
automatically imitated these organizations ; or, rather,
compelled by necessity, directed their activities into
the channels which already traversed the land,
rejecting, however, in the process everything that
savoured of polytheism. We may thus certainly
say, with some reservations, that the above-men
tioned organizations had their share in the constitu
tion of the Church ; but yet it is misleading to assert
that the Christian communities organized themselves
on the model of heathen ' religious societies ' or of
civic ' corporations ', much less on the model of
' phUosophical schools ', for it should not be forgotten
that the chief points of resemblance in external
form which they had in common with the religious
societies, philosophical schools, &c., sprang from the
inner principle of the Christian societies themselves
(p.l67f.). All this is carefully weighed ; but the point on
which the later language differs most from the earlier
is contained in the last clause, i.e. in the greater
stress that is laid on the working of ' the inner
principle of the Christian societies themselves'.
I am glad to believe that on aU sides of the history
of the Early Church Harnack sees the importance
of this working more clearly than he did, and that
he would ascribe to it a larger proportion of influ
ence on the real course of events.
When Hatch delivered his Bampton Lectures in

The Primitive Model 61
1880 there was an impression that he was seculariz
ing his subject, that he was assigning an excessive
weight to secondary and secular causes. His method
was described as an attempt to explain the origin
of the Christian ministry by action ' from below '
rather than ' from above '. He himself anticipated
and demurred to this kind of description :
There are some, no doubt, who will think that to
account for the organization of the Church in this
way is to detract from the nobility of its birth, or
from the divinity of its life. There are some who
can see a divinity in the thunder-peal, which they
cannot see in the serenity of a summer noon, or in
the growth of the flowers of spring. . . . [Man him
self is a product of evolution, and yet he is a monu
ment of divine power, and manifestation of divine
life. . . .] And so, it may be — nor is it a derogation
from its grandeur to say that it was — out of antece
dent and, if you will, lower forms, out of existing
elements of human institutions, by the action of
existing forces of human society, swayed as you will
by the breathing of the Divine Breath, controlled as
you will by the Providence which holds in its hand
the wayward wills of men no less than the courses
of the stars, but still out of elements, and by the
action of forces, analogous to those which have
resulted in other institutions of society, and other
forms of government, came into being that widest
and strongest and most enduring of institutions
which bears the sacred name of the Holy Catholic
Church. The divinity which clings to it is the
divinity of order {B.L., p. 19 f ).
I am not sure that I am quite satisfied with this,
although it really contains the root of the matter.

62 IVie Priinitive Church and Reunion
It does this, but it is a little too cold and has about
it a little too much of a philosophical afterthought.
The old Hebraic language seems to me better, which
sees everywhere in events the hand of ' the living
God ', and sees it in intenser degree in all that is in
any way bound up with the great Divine plan for
the redemption of mankind.
I cannot help thinking that this may be one of
the reconciling influences of the future. The con
templation of the hand of God in history, the close-
knit process of continuous adjustment and growth
by which institutions are formed, may well have
a deep attraction for minds that are not impressed
by the spectacle of human authority as such.
Hitherto the study of history has often been too
one-sided, a search for one set of precedents at the
expense of others. But as history becomes more of
a science, as the conscience of the historian becomes
more acute, there will be a greater readiness to take
facts as they stand and to believe that they are part
of a divine order.
It must be confessed that Hatch's presentation of
the origin of the Ministry did seem to be upon the
lower plane. It did seem to lay stress on the lower
order of causation, rather than on the higher. It
did seem to be conceived in the interest of Natural
ism ; the religious significance of the process seemed
to recede into the background. It is not surprising
that it should be called a theory of development
' from below ' rather than ' from above '.

The Primitive Model 63
I would, indeed, join with Dr. Lindsay in depre
cating this, as in many ways a false antithesis :
When the question is put : ' Must ministerial
character be in aU cases conferred from above, or
may it sometimes, and with equal validity, be evolved
from below ? ' it appears to me that a fallacy lurks
in the antithesis. ' From below ' is used in the sense
' from the membership of the Church ', and the
inference suggested by the contrast is that what
comes ' from below ' — i. e. from the membership of
the Church — cannot come ' from above ' — i. e. cannot
be of divine origin, warrant, and authority. Why
not ? May the Holy Spirit not use the membership
of the Church as His instrument ? Is there no real
abiding presence of Christ among His people ? Is
not this promised Presence something which belongs
to the sphere of God, and may it not be the source
of an authority which is ' from above ' ? — The Church
and the Ministry, p. ix f ^
I beHeve this criticism to be true. And yet there
are different ways of presenting a process seen from
below; and that adopted by Dr. Hatch, and by
Harnack in agreement with him, was hardly the
most spiritual.
But, whatever the attitude of the German theo
logian eight-and-twenty years ago, he has redressed
the balance now. It is true that his new book is
in the main a dictionary article, and that this parti
cular form does not exactly lend itself to warmth
of religious expression. But, although somewhat
' The same point is made in various places by Dr. Bartlet.

64 The Primitive Church and Reunion
repressed, the warmth is really there; or, rather,
the fundamental conception is such as to generate
inevitably the feeling of religious warmth.
This comes out in a number of places in which
Harnack speaks of the religious idea of ' the Church'
as determining the form of the ministry. He calls
it 'an evolution from the whole to the part', as
opposed to, and balanced by, ' the gathering up of
the parts into a whole '.
On the one hand, the whole [the idea of the
Church] is a product of the parts ; therefore it cannot
be, and is not meant to be, much more than an
' idea '. The central organization and the local or
ganization are in perpetual strife with one another,
just because each needs the other, and the death
of the one must of necessity involve the decay of
the other. The whole constitutional history of the
Church can be represented with the conflict of these
two powers as its framework {op. cit., p. 42).
In somewhat more concrete expression :
The communities are subject to the Word of God
(or of the Lord) and the paternal discipline of the
apostle who founded them : but in so far as the
Spirit rules them, this Spirit is granted to the com
munity as a whole and as a unity, and the officials
and personages are in the position of members in
this unity, and not above it. This follows from the
nature of the communities which not only share
the name ' church ' {eKKXtja-ia) with the general com
munity of God, but every one of which is a finished
picture of the Church as a whole, and indeed its
consummation (for the whole is in the part and not
merely the part in the whole). Ideally, and from

The Primitive Model 65
the religious point of view, there is therefore no
difference at all, however paradoxical this may seem,
between the general community and the individual
community ... but in actual fact it was naturally
not possible or desirable that this difference should
be abolished ; rather, it made itself more and more
strongly felt. The ideal unity of the two lies m the
working of the Spirit (p. 46).
As a significant piece of evidence for what the indi
vidual community was ideally, appeal is naturaUy
made to the current phrase ' the Church of God
which sojourneth in ' Rome, Corinth, or the like (reff.,
p. 47).
Again, more in the abstract :
The Christian community in every individual city
is not only a ' Church of God ' {eKKXrja-ia toD deoD), but,
like the latter, it belongs properly to heaven ; here
on earth it is only a transitory sojourner in a strange
land. It is thus a heavenly entity — i. e. fundamen-
taUy not a particular community, but a manifestation
of the whole in the part (p. 48).
It is a satisfaction to note that language such as
this would be abundantly and heartily endorsed by
the most religious minds among our own Noncon
formists. For instance, this is the way in which
a quotation from Hort is commented upon by Dr.
Vernon Bartlet (we may discount a little in the first
sentence) :
Over against this large Protestant CathoHcism,
docile to the teachings of Divine Providence in
modern times, as well as in the remote past, stands

66 The Primitive Church and Reunion
the shadow of a doctrinaire Catholicism which is a
mere clericalism unworthy the noble name of High
Churchmanship. This latter is the peculiar pre
rogative of no one Church, and of no one school or
party in a Church. It exists in all those who feel
that the Christian society, in any one of its many
forms and in them all, has a high function to per
form in the economy of human redemption ; and
who are ready to sacrifice personal wishes in order
to foster its fellowship as defined by Christ and His
apostles {The Contemporary Revieiv, 1897, p. 84).
Of course, there is something of opposition (and
it may be something also of misunderstanding !) in
this. Before I have done (perhaps not in this article)
I shall try to do something towards removing this.
But in the meantime, I believe it to be a fact of
great importance that our friends on the other side
the border have a doctrine of the Church which is
so genuinely, and in the best sense, a ' high ' doc
trine. I see in this another influence that I should
hope may be really unifying.
It is characteristic of Sohm's essay that he, too,
lays stress on the religious idea of the Church,
though only to draw from it the unnecessary and
paradoxical inference that the Church on earth
needs no formal constitution and can only admit of
one by a contradiction of its essential nature.
' The Church of Christ,' he says :
the fact that there is upon earth a ' holy Christian
people ', redeemed by Christ, translated by faith out
of the bondage of servants into the adoption of sons.

T'he Primitive Model 67
bearing in itself Hfe from God, can only be beUeved
and not seen. The Church of Christ is an object of
belief {oY faith), therefore for the believer it is neces
sarily visible (in Word and Sacrament), but just as
necessarUy invisible to the world (in forms of Law).
The invisibUity of the Church of Christ removes it
of necessity from the region of Law. The legally
constituted Church can never, as such, be the Church
of Christ, and therefore can never speak in the name
of the Church of Christ, can never enforce its ordi
nances as the ordering of the Church of Christ, as
the ordering of the life of Christian men with God,
because the Church of Christ is beyond the range
of aU legal order ( Wesen u. Ursprung d. Katholizismus,
p. 11 f).
The writer does not seem to see — or, if he sees,
he does not acknowledge — that by describing the
Church as the Church on earth, and as visible par
tially (in Word and Sacrament), he thereby makes
room for a yet larger degree of visibUity, which may
bring it, and in practice is found to bring it, within
the domain of law. This legal aspect may not be
on the same level as the religious aspect, but it, too,
is real.

II
It is time that I tried to give some idea of the
leading points in the conception which Harnack
now puts forward. I believe that I can do so best
by singHng out some of his most significant passages

68 The Primitive Church and Reunion
in regard to the Church and its most important
officials, the presbyters and bishops. In quoting,
I shall venture to omit references and other inser
tions which interrupt the flow of the argument.
The name ' the Church ' (' Qahal ') was the happiest
stroke which the primitive community accomplished
in the way of descriptive titles (that it goes back to
Jesus Himself is not very probable, in spite of
Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 17). Paul found it already in
use, and indeed in three different senses : as a general
name for those who believed in Christ, ' those of the
Church,' as meaning the individual community, and
as meaning the assembling together of the commu
nity. The primitive community took over the most
solemn expression which Judaism used for the whole
body of the people in relation to the worship of God
(' Qahal ' — in the Septuagint translated as a rule by
' church ', €KKXr]a-ia, is the community in its relation
to God, and is therefore more solemn than the pro-
faner term ' edhah ', which is always translated
' synagogue ', a-wayoryq, by the Septuagint. The
adoption of eKKXrjaia is thus to be understood in the
same way as that of ' Israel ', ' seed of Abraham', &c.
Among the Jews eKKXrja-ia was not so much used as
avvayoiyri in the everyday life of that period, and this
was very favourable for the Christians). The many-
sided usage, together with the reHgious colouring —
the community caUed of God — as weU as the possi
bility of personification, quickly brought the con
ception and the word into prominence, and the
allied conception, ' the people ' (6 Xaoi) could not
keep its place as a technical term as opposed to
eKKXijaia. Just because the Christians possessed the
title Tj fKKXrjo-ia, it was unnecessary to take over the
name jj a-vyayayrj, which, it is true, was not anxiously

The Primitive Model 69
avoided, but yet seldom employed. Just as they
were no mere body of pupils (in contrast with the
Twelve and the apostles), so also they were not
a synagogue, like the Libertines or the Cilicians.
They were a community called of God and ruled by
the Spirit— i. e. something entirely new, but for this
very reason the realization of the old ideal. . . . The
conception of the Church originally contained no
authoritative element ; but every spiritual entity
which presents itself as a society partly ideal and
partly real contains within itself from the beginning
such an element : it is ' prior to ' the individual ; it
has its traditions and ordinances, its special powers
and organization. These are authoritative ; in addi
tion it supports the individual and at the same time
assures him of the validity of that to which it bears
witness. . . . The greatest importance, however,
attached to the fact that Paul (was he the first?)
inaugurated a speculative theory of Christ in relation
to the Church, which indeed is founded on the old
idea of the covenant of God with His people. ... In
this speculation the Church became a heavenly and
an earthly (because ' manifested ') Being at the same
time, and participated in aU statements which were
made concerning Christ. The Church is in heaven ;
it was created before the world ; it is the Eve of the
heavenly Adam ; it is the bride of Christ, the body
of Christ ; it is in a certain sense Christ Himself,
appearing conjointly with Him from heaven in this
final period. What TertulHan has summed up in
the words ' In a company of two is Christ, but the
Church is Christ. When, then, you cast yourself at
the brethren's knees, you are handUng Christ, you
are entreating Christ'— it is this combination of
loftiest simplicity and extravagant mysticism which
men kept before them with greater or less clearness
in the widest circles and almost from the beginning.

70 The Primitive Church and Reunion
It was comforting, it imposed a serious obligation,
and it was a rapturous thought full of power from
on high, that the Christian, as a member of the
Church, not only has his rights of citizenship in
heaven, but is also a member of the body of Christ :
yet the responsibility grew in proportion, and the
glorious crown might also be a terrible burden
(pp. 15-18).
The writer of this striking passage shows a real
grasp of the place which the idea of the Church
held in the life of the early Christians.
Among the 'assumptions' which Hatch laid to
the charge of Canon Liddon, one was 'that Jesus
Christ founded, whether mediately or immediately,
a visible society or group of societies '. And other
writers have questioned the same assumption, on
the ground that there is no passage in the Gospels
that unequivocally describes such foundation. Har
nack, while he calls the name ' the Church ' (' Qahal')
'the happiest stroke which the primitive commu
nity accomplished in the way of descriptive titles',
thinks it not very probable that it goes back to Jesus
Himself, ' in spite of Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 17 ' (p. 15).
I cannot agree on the question of probability ; for
it seems to me that Harnack himself has removed
the greatest difficulty that stands in the way. I ven
ture to print in italics the first sentence of the
following quotation, because it seems to me to be
of great importance :
The Church is younger and older than Jesus. It
existed in a certain sense long before Him. It was

The Primitive Model 71
founded by the prophets, in the first place within
Israel, but even at that time it pointed beyond itself
All subsequent developments are changes of form
(p. 4 n.).
It may be true that in strict accuracy our Lord did
not 'found the Church', because it was already
founded. And yet it was not exactly the Jewish
Church of which He spoke, because (as in so many
other ways) He prophetically transferred the title
to the society which He saw would grow out of the
conditions which He was creating. There cannot
be any real improbability in the attribution to Christ
of a word that occurs about a hundred times in the
LXX, and that is found in full possession in the
earliest Epistles of St. Paul. We may say that our
Lord must have used the word, perhaps, in the first
instance, without more specific application, but its
meaning moved onwards with the course of events.
Perhaps the most summary passage in which
Harnack deals -with the origin of the terms ' pres
byter ' and ' bishop ' is the following. It is dashed
off in bold and vigorous strokes, and it does not
attempt to discriminate fine shades of probability;
but its merit is that as a theory it is not too rigid
but free and flexible, and that it keeps open more
possibilities than one — which, where so much has
to be left to conjecture, is advisable.
' Presbyter ' may denote simply the old as opposed
to the young; it may be a title of honour (by
which personal excellence as well as the quality of

72 The Primitive Church and Reunion
representing an older authoritative period [ = a wit
ness of tradition] is marked) ; it can also denote the
elected and formally appointed member of a council
{yepovcTia). The use of the word in its different mean
ings within the Christian communities may be de
rived from the synagogue — this is the most natural
assumption — or from the municipal constitutions,
or it may have arisen spontaneously. In the same
way the bishops {ema-Koiroi) may be derived from the
Septuagint; they may have been copied from the
municipal administrations, but they may also — and
this is the most probable view — have arisen spon
taneously. The word always signifies an overseer,
curator, superintendent ; but as to what the super
vision is concerned with, it contains no indication.
It may be souls, and then the word is equivalent to
pastors, TTot/ilj/ey (see 1 Pet. ii. 25, ' the shepherd and
overseer of your souls '...), but it may also be build
ings, economic affairs, &c., or it may be a combina
tion of the two (p. 58 f.).
This describes the functions of the bishop as they
appeared at the beginning of the process of develop
ment (in the last quarter, or rather more, of the first
century). And then, at the end of the process (say,
a hundred years later) the picture presented is some
what as follows :
The bishop, just because he is monarch in the
community, is its head and functionary in every
relation. He represents the community in the eyes
of God (in sacrifice and prayer) ; he represents the
community in the eyes of the sister-communities (by
epistles and the reception of strangers coming from
other communities) ; he represents the community
in the eyes of the outer world ; and, lastly, by his

The Primitive Model 73
administration of the sacraments and by his teaching,
he represents God and Christ to the communitv
(p. 121).
I suppose that in this, for the date given, all scholars
would be practically agreed.
The question, then, is how we are to conceive of
the process of transition. In other words, what is
the origin of the monarchical episcopate (e.g. as it
appears in the Ignatian Letters) ? Here, again,
Harnack shaU speak for us :
It follows from this exposition that in the very
earliest period presbyters and bishops here and there
coincided, so that every duly appointed presbyter
was also caUed a bishop. But quick and decisive
was the victory of the form of expression according
to which only the officials who played an active and
leading part in the assembly of the community and
in the care of the poor were called ' bishops' (with
out losing the name ' presbyter ' or their place in
the coUege of presbyters). This victory — ' bishop '
{iiria-Konos) is a higher name and probably has nothing
to do originally with the secular kiria-Ko-nos of a city,
but only with the kwicrKonos Christ [The reference is
to such passages as 1 Pet. ii. 25 ; Ign. Eph. vi. 1 ;
Magn. vi. 1, xiii. 2 ; TraU. ui. 1 ; Rom. ix. 1] ; at
a later period analogies may have been set up, and
here and there these may have been of importance,
but this cannot be proved — [this victory] is obviously
a proof of the increasing importance of the care of
the poor and of the service in the assembly of the
community, which more and more resolved itself
into the conducting of public worship, now beginning
to estabUsh itself in a fixed form. But the function
of the bishops and deacons (especially, however, of
1B09 K

74 The Primitive Church and Reunion.
the former) must have completely differentiated itself
from that of the presbyters in general, when, owing
to the lack of prophets and teachers, they were
charged with the function of building up by means
of the Word {tov Xoyov toD Oeov XaXeiv), and other
duties which these inspired men had hitherto per
formed (p. 92 ; the evidence that follows of the in
creasing estimation of the bishop is very pertinent).
As regards the question of the origin of the
monarchical office, it is extremely significant that it
developed in connexion with the problem of orga
nization. Organization came within the sphere of the
officials in charge of public worship, who also had in
their hands the administration of the funds and the
care of the poor. These officials in charge of the
worship are already mentioned by Paul (Philippians);
Clement not only carries back their appointment to
the apostles, but also knows of an apostolical injunc
tion dealing with the lasting necessity of such an
office of overseer {tma-Kowi]), while Hermas connects
them with the apostles and teachers, and the Didache
with the prophets and teachers (similar assertions
are not made about the office of the presbyters).
Since we are deprived of almost every direct source
of information concerning the origin of the monarchy
of the bishop, we are thrown back upon hypotheses.
In connexion with these we must be mindful of the
saying of Salmon : ' If the original constitution of
the Church was not the same as in the time of
Irenaeus, it must at least have been capable of an
inner development to the later form, and indeed in
the form of quite gradual changes, called forth by
causes universal in their nature ' (p. 96).
Harnack goes on to specify a number of causes
which contributed to the concentration of powers in
the hands of the bishop :

The Primitive Model 75
(i) Probably where the monarchy of the leading
apostle (prophet or teacher) in a local community
lapsed, there was from the beginning a kind of
informal monarchy, i.e. the college of ruling pres
byters needed, like all colleges, a president, and the
community likewise needed an executive official. . . .
(ii) When public worship began to assume fixed
forms and a ritual developed and estabUshed itself,
it was natural that the leadership should come more
and more into the hands of an individual ; indeed,
the celebration of the Eucharist perhaps required
fi-om the beginning a single leader. . . .
(iii) Intercourse also with external bodies required
a single representative to conduct the business of
the community. . . .
(iv) In this connexion it will also be allowable to
lay special emphasis on the teaching given, and on
the protection of the communities from Gnostic
errors by the appointment of a single authoritative
teacher. . . .
(v) The putting forward of lists of bishops (after
the last quarter of the second century : in Rome,
Antioch, Corinth, &c.) would have been an impudent
falsification, which could not possibly have succeeded,
if from an early period a single individual had not
thus stood out as primus inter pares in the presbyteral
coUege of many communities (in the sense in which
Clement comes forward as author in the Eoman
Epistle to Corinth). Just for this very reason it is
quite impossible to say when the monarchical episco
pate really began. It developed by a gradual process
of differentiation, though the fundamental tendency
was not at the beginning monarchical in character.
[See, however (i) above ; I do not think that more
can be meant than the original equivalence of
presbyter and bishop.]
(vi) There was another reason why the develop-

76 The Primitive Church and Reunion
ment towards monarchy could never appear as a
break with the past, viz. in many matters the
bishop, even after he had become monarchical, acted
in the same way as before, namely, as a fellow-
presbyter along with the college of presbyters. . . .
(pp. 96-100).
On aU these points the substantial difference
between scholars would not be great. Harnack him
self says, in a note at the end of his sketch :
If this account be compared with that given by
Duchesne {Early History of the Christian Church, pp.
62 ff.) the difference is apparently extremely small,
but that it is a significant one is shown by such a
sentence as this, on p. 66 : ' Whether they (the
communities) had one bishop at their head or
whether they had a college of several, the episcopate
carried on the apostolic succession.' As regards the
beginnings this is incorrect.

Ill
This last statement brings me to what I beHeve
are, from our present point of view, the most
important paragraphs in the whole of Harnack's
book ; namely, those which deal with the question
of Apostolical Succession. It will be seen from
these precisely how much the difference from
Duchesne really amounts to. I have already quoted
copiously from the Berlin Professor, and I must go
on to quote stiU more. But I beHeve that he wUl
forgive me, because I have reaUy no choice in the

The Primitive Model 77
matter. He is at once the most iUustrious and the
best witness that can possibly be produced ; and it
is essential that he should speak in his own words,
and not in any fallible paraphrase of mine. He
writes as follows :
An attribute of quite special importance is pro
claimed quite clearly in the West as early as the
end of the second century, i.e. the attribute of the
ApostoHcal Succession of the bishops. In that epoch
of civilization, ideas of succession were by no means
unusual ; they generally took the form of mystical
conceptions and legal fictions. These, however, are
based on a very true analysis of experience, since
there is hardly anjdihing which gives a greater feel
ing of confidence and stability (if one does not go
beyond a supei-ficial view) than the chain of regular
successions in an office or calling, or in connexion
with the transmission of a doctrine regarded as a
deposit. Precedents and limitations necessarily grow
up in connexion with any office, as well as ideas of
what is inevitably involved in it, and these influence
not only the outside public but also the holders of
the office or the custodians of the deposit, and confer
upon these men, as a kind of permanent stamp, a
characteristic temperament and reputation, as though
the originator of the whole chain were in some sort
incarnate in them all. And even where the succes
sion is not felt so vividly or taken so literally, still
the chain seems at least to afford a guarantee that
here everything is preserved unchanged, though in
truth this is a great error, for nothing living can
escape the transforming influence of time. In that
age all authority was represented by successions,
which rendered unnecessary and forbade any real
examination of what the authority commanded.

78 The Primitive Church and Reunion
But the whole question turns upon this. The
Eoman constitution and law rested on successions,
and the same applied equally to the philosophical
schools of the period. Judaism, too, had its succes-
sions.i Long before there was any thought of the
apostolic succession of the bishops, successions were
to be met with in the Church itself, namely, the
succession of teachers, who had once been disciples
of older teachers (and so on right up to the apostles),
and the succession of the prophets; How inevitable
was the thought of succession in connexion with the
possession of a deposit of doctrine is shown on the
one hand by the Pastoral Epistles (see e. g. 2 Tim. ii.
2, ' and the things which thou hast heard from me
among many witnesses, the same commit thou to
faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also ')
and on the other by the Gnostic sects, which laid
the greatest stress on the successions of their teachers
right up to the apostles. Under such circumstances
it is rash to refer the apostolic succession of the
bishops solely to the influence of Roman legal ideas
(Tschirn, Zeitschrift filr Kirchengeschichte, xii, pp.
220-31), although these may have co-operated as a
strong secondary factor. If the right doctrine of
God was the main thing in the Church, on which
everything else was built, and if the monarchical
bishops had become despotic leaders and teachers
. . . there is no great need to ask whence and why
the idea of succession was transferred to them. It
was bound to come in of itself, and even the fact
that very soon it was applied exclusively to the
' We remember the regular Talmudic formula for the succes
sion of Rabbis : Antigonos of Sooho received from Symeon the
Just ; Shemaiah and Abtalion received from Jehudah ben Tabai
and Symeon ben Shatach ; Hillel and Shammai received from
these, and so on : 7rapa8oo-ts (' handing on *) was a key-word of
Judaism.

The Primitive Model 79
bishops and all other successions disappeared, needs
no explanation, for it is only a special case in the
general development of the episcopate, which van
quished aU other rivals. The sole point that demands
an explanation is the fact that it is only the apos
tolate in the form of the apostolate of the Twelve
which is brought in as the starting-point of the
chain of succession. Their introduction presupposes
the dying out of the general body of apostles, and
at the same time the necessity, imposed by the con
flict with the Gnostics, of carrying back everything
in the Church to the eyewitnesses, and of connecting
the means of proof afforded by the apostles with the
thing to be proved — i.e. the adoration of the Crucified
and Risen God-Man. The theory that the bishops
received by succession {per successionem) the true
Gospel as a charisma from the apostles, that there
fore as teachers they represent in their combined
testimony the apostles (namely, the Twelve — Paul
only occupies a secondary position), and that only in
this way is the truth preserved in the churches
{Veritas in ecclesiis custoditur), would probably have
established itself without the conflict with the
Gnostics, but in point of fact it did develop in con
sequence of that conflict. We meet with the theory
first in Irenaeus and TertuUian. . . .
Like every element in the organization of the
Church, however new it may appear, this apostolicity
of the bishops had its preparatory stages, going
beyond what was already fully developed. These
stages consisted in the putting of the shepherds
alongside the apostles, prophets, and teachers in the
Epistle to the Ephesians ; the setting of the bishops
alongside the apostles in Hermas, and the fact that
the duty of teaching, which at an earlier period had
been discharged by the apostles and teachers, now
devolved first upon the bishops as a body, and then

80 The Primitive Church and Reunion
upon the individual bishop. The way was also
prepared by the personalities of particular bishops,
whose virtue and force of character gained for them
an apostolic reputation which was then transferred
to the whole order of bishops. . . .
It foUowed as a necessary consequence of the
conception of the apostolicity of the bishops that the
ancient, and partly correct, tradition that the apostles
had appointed the officials of the Church now became
specialized, and it was asserted that the apostles (or
in such cases always a single apostle) had appointed
the bishops in the individual communities ' . . . The
apostolical character of the episcopate, which was
the crown and culmination of its dignity, raised
it high above the presbyters, and so immediately
restored to it the pre-eminence and reputation which
it seemed likely to lose through being placed on the
same level as the presbyters in their capacity of
priests. ... As individuals the presbyters were
probably not very important where the community
was small and there was only one assembly for
worship in a place, but no doubt they gained in
importance where there were several such assemblies,
for then they were commissioned by the bishop to
conduct the services of the branch congregations,
and he needed their advice and help in the numerous
and important matters which came before him
(pp. 122-9).
It is safe to say that never before has the idea of
succession from the Apostles been analysed in a
' It is doubtless right to speak of this tradition, so far as the
claim is made for the Twelve, as only ' partly correct ' ; but if
' apostle ' is taken in the wider sense, and as standing for the
whole class of 'apostles and prophets' it would have more
foimdation. The distinction between the two senses of ' apostle'
was gradually forgotten.

The Primitive Model 81
manner nearly so searching. We see how it strikes
down roots and fibres into the soil out of which it
springs ; and we become aware how naturally, and
even inevitably, it grows out of the conditions by
which it is surrounded. Only one who was possessed
at once of a very full knowledge of these conditions,
of the imaginative gift of presenting them to the
mind's eye in Uving interaction, and of keen insight
into the connexion of effect and cause, could have
produced such a picture. The upshot seems to be
that the doctrine of Apostolic Succession represents
a real continuity, expressed in the relative and
symbolical form appropriate to the time.
Of course the method by which this is brought
out is strictly historical, and not dogmatic. But
that is just what I believe increases its importance.
For, if I am not mistaken, the great desideratum at
the present moment is the vivifying and correcting
of dogmatic formulae by means of history. I must
not say more about this now. The first step before
us is to determine as nearly as we can the exact
sequence of the historical facts ; and the next step is
to adjust the theoretic conclusions which we derive
from them.
To this double task I hope to return in the next
paper ; to complete the historic picture with the help
of some further material, and then to face directly
the question or questions of principle.

82 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Note. — Attention should be called to an important
article on 'Apostolic Succession', by Dr. A. C. Head-
lam, in The Prayer Booh Dictionary (London, 1912).
This article deals with the whole subject, including
the later history of the conception, in a very com
prehensive manner. It draws a helpful distinction
between Succession (a) as Orderly Sequence, {h) as
Apostolic Commission, (c) as Continuity of Function,
and {d) as Transmitting Grace. While the first
three of these constituent ideas are affirmed, the
fourth is questioned, as a late importation, developed
chiefly in connexion with the Tractarian movement
in the nineteenth century. This view is sure to
receive further examination. Taken along with
Harnack's treatise, the article suggests that, on the
one hand, the idea of a continuous succession of the
Christian Ministry from the Apostles will be seen to
be deeply rooted in reason and history, but that, on
the other hand, any rigid and mechanical appHcation
of the idea for the purpose of invalidating one form
of ministry as compared with another is to be
deprecated.

THE PRIMITIVE MODEL
{continued)

Ill
the primitive model (continued)
[February, 1912]
We remember Matthew Arnold's satirical dictum :
' The spear of freedom, like that of AchiUes, has the
power to heal the wounds which itself makes.' It
was written in jest, but there is a serious side to it,
and it is true of other things besides freedom. The
only real corrective for the ill effects of criticism
is more and better criticism. And the only sure
remedy for the ill effects of historical theory is
historical theory revised and rectified.
The process is of this kind. An institution, or
a group of institutions, comes down from the past,
and for a long time it is passively accepted and
prevails simply because it has so come down ; the
world acquiesces in it, and settles itself comfortably
to sleep upon it. But after a while the great inert
mass begins to stir; one here and another there
rubs his eyes and awakes. Awkward questions are
asked ; and soon the old passive acceptance and
acquiescence gives way. New theories are broached ;
there is a hubbub of debate and discussion in the
air ; sects and schools are formed, and rally round
a few given types. These sects and schools keep

86 The Primitive Church and Reunion
up their controversies ; statements and counter-
statements are constantly put forward ; and by
degrees points emerge one after another on which
all the controversiaHsts are agreed. Little by little
these plots of agreement are enlarged and expand,
and wider spaces are enclosed. Gradually the origi
nal process of division and separation is reversed ;
gaps are bridged over ; walls of partition are thrown
down, and ditches are filled in ; till at last the
broken and intersected surface is restored to order
and continuity.

If I am not mistaken, something of this kind has
been going on in regard to the old controversies
about the Constitution of the Primitive Church.
Different ideals have had their advocates. Argu
ments have been put forward on this side and on
that. But even controversialists have a conscience ;
as time goes on, and historical methods become more
fixed, the margin of possible difference is reduced ;
the strong points in opposing propositions obtain
recognition ; almost imperceptibly the advocates of
different sides draw nearer to each other ; they
become less of advocates and more of disinterested
historians. At last there arises a critic or historian
who is really master of his craft. He steps into the

The Primitive Model 87
field, surveys it as a whole, and re-states the various
ex parte contentions in such a way that discrepancies
are removed and conflicting claims are satisfied.
Sectional and partial opinions yield to the unifying
force of truth.
In a previous paper we have followed a process
like this in the footsteps of one who is probably the
foremost critic of this generation (Prof. Harnack).
And now we may place by the side of our conspectus
of the results of analytic criticism a picture of the
same ground drawn by the hand of a constructive
historian. This too, if I can trust my own judge
ment, is a very masterly picture, based upon pro
found knowledge and traced upon the lines, not
of this party or of that, but of strictly objective
science. The picture to which I refer is contained in
the chapter on the ' Organization of the Church ',
contributed to the first volume of the Cambridge
Mediaeval History, by Mr. Cuthbert H. Turner, of
Magdalen CoUege, Oxford. We have had to wait for
the appearance of this volume,^ though through the
kindness of the author I had access to the paper
before pubUcation. The chapter is concerned pri-
marUy with the organization of the Church in the
fourth century, but it is introduced by a sketch of
^ It was published after more than one postponement, on
November 15, 1911. I am indebted to the Syndics of the
Cambridge Press for their kind permission to quote as freely
as I have done.

88 The Primitive Church and Reunion
the antecedent conditions, which, for all its brevity,
is remarkably fuU and exact.
The chapter opens with an impressive statement
of the double process, partly simultaneous and partly
successive ; on the one hand, the gradual articula
tion and differentiation of functions within itself of
the single community, and on the other hand, the
no less gradual union of these communities into
a federated system. This double process is sketched
in broad outline.
In the early days of Christianity the first begin
nings of a new community were of a very simple
kind : indeed the local organization had at first no
need to be anything but rudimentary, just because
the community was never thought of as complete
in itself apart from its apostolic founder or other
representatives of the missionary ministry. ' Pres
byters ' and ' deacons ' no doubt existed in these
communities from the first : ' presbyters ' were
ordained for each church as it was founded on
St. Paul's first missionary journey ; ' bishops and
deacons ' constitute, together with the ' holy people ',
the church of Philippi. These purely local officials
were naturally chosen from among the first converts
in each district, and to them were naturally assigned
the duties of providing for the permanently recur
ring needs of Christian life, especiaUy the sacra
ments of Baptism — St. Paul indicates that baptism
was not normaUy the work &. an apostle — and the
Eucharist. But the evidence of the earlier epistles
of St. Paul is decisive as to the smaU relative impor
tance which this local ministry enjoyed : the true
ministry of the first generation was the ordered
hierarchy, ' first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly

The Primitive Model 89
teachers,' of which the apostle speaks with such
emphasis in his first epistle to the Corinthians.
Next, in due order, after the ranks of the primary
ministry came the gifts of miracles — ' then powers,
then gifts of healing '¦ — and only after these, wrapped
up in the obscure designation of ' helps and govern
ments ', can we find room for the local service of
presbyters and deacons. Even without the definite
evidence of the Acts and the Pastoral Epistles and
St. Clement of Rome, it would be already clear
enough that the powers of the local ministry were
narrowly limited, and that to the higher ministry,
the exercise of whose gifts was not confined to
any one community but was independent of place
altogether, belonged not only the general right of
supervision and ultimate authority over local churches,
but also in particular the imparting of the gift of
the Spirit, whether in what we call Confirmation or
in what we call Ordination. In effect, the Church
of the first age may almost be said to have consisted
of a laity grouped in local communities, and a
ministry that moved about from place to place to
do the work of missionaries to the heathen, and
of preachers and teachers to the converts. Most of
St. Paul's epistles to churches are addressed to the
community, the holy people, the brethren, without
any hint in the title of the existence of a local
clergy : the apostle and the Christian congregation
are the two factors of primary account. The Didache
shows us how right down to the end of the first
century, in remoter districts, the communities de
pended on the visits of wandering apostles, or of
prophets and teachers, sometimes wandering, some
times settled, and how they held by comparison in
very light esteem their presbyters and deacons.
Even a weU-estabHshed church, like that of Corinth,
with half a century of history behind it, was able,
1D09 M

90 The Primitive Church and Reunion
however unreasonably, to refuse to recognize in its
local ministry any right of tenure other than the willof
the community ; and when the Roman church inter
vened to point out the gravity of the blow thus
struck at the principle of Christian order, it was
still the community of Rome which addressed the
community of Corinth. And this custom of writing
in the name, or to the address, of the community
continued, a relic of an earlier age, well into the
days of the strictest monarchical episcopacy : it was
not so much the bishop's headship of the community
as the multiplication of the clergy which . . . made
the real gap between the bishop and his people.
Most of our documents then of the first century
shew us the local churches neither self-sufficient nor
self-contained, but dependent for all special ministries
upon the visits of the superior officers of the Church.
On the other hand, most of our documents of the
second century — in its earlier years the Ignatian
letters, and an ever-increasing bulk of evidence as
the century goes on — shew us the local churches
complete in themselves, with an officer at the head
of each who concentrates in his hands both the
powers of the local ministers and those also which
had at first been reserved exclusively for the
' general ' ministry, but who is himself as strictly
Hmited in the extent of his jurisdiction to a single
church as were the humbler presbyter-bishops from
whom he derived his name.
I am ashamed to quote so much ; but I think the
reader will agree with me that it has not been
possible either to stop or to omit. In a picture so
nicely calculated every word tells, and every word
seems to be necessary to the balance and complete
ness of the whole.

The Primitive 3Iodel 91
I am compelled to go on :
In those early days of episcopacy, among the
diminutive groups of Christian ' strangers and so
journers ' which were dotted over the pagan world
of the second century, we must conceive of a quite
special closeness of relation between a bishop and
his people. Regularly in all cities — and it was in
the provinces where city life was most developed
that the Church made quickest progress — a bishop
is found at the head of the community of Christians :
and his intimacy with his people was in those primi
tive days unhindered by the interposition of any
hierarchy of functionaries or attendants. His flock
was small enough for him to carry out to the letter
the pastoral metaphor, and to ' call his sheep by
name '. If the consent of the Christian people had
always been, as Clement of Rome tells us, a neces
sary preliminary to the ordination of Christian
ministers in the case of the appointment of their
bishop the people did not consent merely, they
elected : not tiU the fourth century did the clergy
begin to acquire first a separate and ultimately a pre
dominant share in the process of choice. . . . [Illus
trations foUow.] ... If it is true that in the first
century the apostle-founder and the community as
founded by him are the two outstanding elements
of Christian organization, it is no less true that in
the second century the twin ideas of bishop and
people attain a prominence which throws all sub
ordinate distinctions into the background. . . . But
this personal relation of the bishop to his flock,
which was the ideal of church administrators and
thinkers from Ignatius to Cyprian, could only find
effective realization in a relatively small community :
the very success of the Christian propaganda, and
the consequent increase everywhere of the numbers

92 The Primitive Church and Reunion
of the Christian people, made some further develop
ment of organization imperative. ... In the larger
towns at least there could be now no question of
personal acquaintance between the president of the
community and all its members. No doubt it might
have been possible to preserve the old intimacy at
the cost of unity, and to create a bishop for each
congregation. But the sense of civic unity was an
asset of which Christians instinctively availed them
selves in the service of religion. . . . [Illustrations
follow.] . . . Both in East and West, in the largest
cities as weU as in the smallest, the society of the
faithful was conceived of as an indivisible unit,
and its oneness was expressed in the person of its
one bishop. The napoiKia of Christians in any locality
was not like a hive of bees, which, when numbers
multiplied inconveniently, could throw off a part of
the whole, to be henceforward a complete and inde
pendent organism under separate control. The
necessity for new organization had to be met in
some way which would preserve at all costs the
oneness of the body and its head.
It followed that the work and duties which the
individual bishop could no longer perform in person
must be shared with, or deputed to, subordinate
officials. New offices came into being, in the course
especially of the third century, and the growth of
this clerus or clergy, and its gradual acquisition
during the fourth and fifth centuries of the character
of a hierarchy nicely ordered in steps and degrees,
is a feature of ecclesiastical history of which the
importance has not always been adequately realized.
It is one of the special contributions of the chapter
from which I am quoting that it works out the
history of this process — not quite for the first time.

The Primitive Model 93
for Harnack had again laid the foundations — but
yet with unexampled fullness and precision. For
detaUs any one who wishes must go to the original.
But the general description of the process is very
important ; and the parts relating to the presbyters
and (in a less degree) the deacons, are for our
purpose almost indispensable. I will try to give
the very minimum that I can of these.
Of such a hierarchy the germs had no doubt
existed from the beginning ; and, indeed, presbyters
and deacons were, as we have seen, older component
parts of the local communities than were the bishops
themselves. In the Ignatian theory bishops, pres
byters, and deacons are the three universal elements
of organization, ' without which nothing can be
caUed a church ' (ad Trail. 3). And the distinction
between the two subordinate orders, in their original
scope and intention, was just the distinction between
the two sides of clerical office which in the bishop
were in some sort combined, the spiritual and the
administrative : presbyters were the associates of
the bishop in his spiritual character, deacons in his
administrative functions.
Our earHest documents define the work of pres
byters by no language more commonly than by that
which expresses the 'pastoral 'relation of a shepherd
to his flock : . . . But in proportion as the local
organization became episcopal, the pastoral idea, and
even the name of voc/jl^v, concentrated itself upon the
bishop. . . . Besides pastoral duties, however, the
Pauline epistles bring presbyters into definite rela
tion with the work of teaching. ... It is probable
enough that the second-century bishop shared this,
as all other functions of the presbyterate : St. Poly-

94 The Primitive Church and Reunion
carp is described by his flock as an ' apostolic and
prophetic teacher ' : but, as differentiation progressed,
teaching was one of the duties less easily retained
in the bishop's hands, and our third-century authori
ties are full of references to the class known in
Greek as ol irpea-^vrepoi Kal SiSdaKaXot, in Latin as
presbyteri doctores.
If presbyters were thus the bishop's counsellors
and advisers where counsel was needed, his col
leagues in the rites of Christian worship, his assis
tants and representatives in pastoral and teaching
duties, the prototypes of the diaconate are to be
found in the Seven of the Acts, who were appointed
to disburden the apostles of the work of poor relief
and charity, and to set them free for their more
spiritual duties of 'prayer and ministering of the
Word '. Quite similarly in the Slolkovoi or ' servants '
of the local church, the bishop found ready to hand
a personal staff of clerks and secretaries. . . . Origi
nally, as it would seem, deacons were not ministers
of worship at aU ; the earliest subordinate office in
the liturgy was that of reader. . . . But the process
of transformation by which the diaconate became
more and more a spiritual office began early, and
one of its results was to degrade the readership by
ousting it from its proper functions. . . .
But this development of the diaconate is only part
of a much larger movement. In the greater churches
at least an elaborate differentiation of functions and
functionaries was in course of process during the
third century. Under the pressure of circumstances,
and the accumulation of new duties which the
increasing size and importance of the Christian
communities thrust upon the bishop, much which
he had hitherto done for himself, and which long
remained his in theory, came in practice to be done
for him by the higher clergy. As they moved up

The Primitive Model 95
to take his place, they in turn left duties to be
provided for : as they drew more and more to
the spiritual side of their work, they left the more
secular duties to new officials in their place. . . .
Promotion from one rank of the ministry to another
was of course no new thing. In particular the rise
from the diaconate to the presbyterate, from the
more secular to the more spiritual office, was always
recognized as a legitimate reward for good service.
. . . But it was a serious and far-reaching develop
ment when, in the fourth century, the idea grew up
that the Christian clergy consisted of a hierarchy of
grades, through each of which it was necessary to
pass in order to reach the higher offices. ...
In spite of any occasional reassertions of the older
freedom, it did nevertheless remain true that the
cursus and all it stood for was gradually establishing
itself as a real influence : and it stood for a body
continually growing in size, in articulation, in
strength, in dead weight, which drove in like
a wedge between bishop and people, and fortified
itself by encroachments on both sides. Doubtless
it would have been natural in any case that bishop
and people, no longer enjoying the old affectionate-
ness of personal intercourse, should lose the sense
of community and imperceptibly drift apart ; but the
process was at least hastened and the gap widened
by the interposition of the clerus. It was no longer
the laity, but the clergy alone, who were in direct
touch with the bishop. Even the fundamental right
of the people to elect their bishop slipped gradually
from their hands into the hands of the clergy.
Within the clerical class a continual and steady
upward pressure was at work. The minor orders
take over the business of the diaconate : deacons
assert themselves against presbyters : presbyters
in turn are no longer a body of counsellors to the

96 The Primitive Church and Reunion
bishop acting in common, but, having of necessity
begun to take over all pastoral relations with the
laity, tend as parish priests to a centrifugal inde
pendence. The process of entrenchment within the
parochial freehold was still only in its first begin
nings : but already in the fourth century — when
theologians and exegetes were feeling after a formal
and scientific basis for what had been natural, in
stinctive, traditional — we find presbyters asserting
the claim of an ultimate identity of order with the
episcopate. I am most reluctant to stop, though I am stiU far
from having exhausted the portions directly relevant
and cogent for the particular purpose which I have
before me ; the whole chapter is relevant and cogent
for it. I must needs refer my readers to it as a
whole. Unless I am much mistaken, the whole
treatment of the growth of Christian organization
is nothing less than classical.

II
What, then, is the net result, so far as we have
gone ? What does this new contribution offer towards
the solution of our problem ? In what relation does
it stand to the competing ideals between which the
Church of Christ has to make its choice ? In par
ticular we have to test its relation to the Congrega
tional and Presbyterian ideals. I have called it
classical ; and, if it is classical, it is so specially from

The Primitive Model 97
the point of view of history. Of course I would not
for a moment deprecate criticism. That is the first
step in the process of testing. By all means let
any one who thinks he can find a flaw in the state
ment, whether of fact or of inference, come forward
and say so.
But, in the meantime, and at least so far as this
present series of papers is concerned, I can only
give my own opinion for what it is worth. The
impression made upon me is of something more
than what we ordinarUy mean by sound and accurate
history. In the paragraphs that I have quoted, and
in the whole chapter from which they are taken,
there is a certain quality which reminds me of that
' inevitableness ' which Matthew Arnold ascribed to
the poetry of Wordsworth. In this case it comes,
not merely from the accuracy and admirable selec
tion of the facts, but from what I would caU the
close-knit catenation throughout the chapter of effect
and cause. I cannot remember a piece of historical
writing in which this quality has impressed me so
much. If the maxim holds good vere scire est per
causas scire, then I conceive that the work of which
I am speaking marks a height of knowledge that is
seldom attained. The effect is to give one a feeling
of security, a feeling of being upon solid ground
which no criticism is Hkely to shake, I must leave
it for time to show how far others will share in this
feeling. But, supposing for the moment that I am right
160» N

98 The Primitive Church and Reu7iion
in this estimate— if I am right in my view that
this chapter of The Cambridge Mediaeval History
has the comprehensiveness and thoroughness that
I attribute to it — I beHeve it may be taken as a test
of the different ideals that have been based upon
the study of the Early Church. I will leave it to
others — especially to those who do not belong to our
communion — to apply this test to the Church of
England. I have myself ventured to apply it to the
ideals of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism,
with a result that I confess does not surprise me.
The conclusion to which I come is that these ideals
are — not by any means wrong, on the contrary, it
seems to me that they have a great deal to say for
themselves — but sectional and partial. They are
true enough so far as they go ; but they do not
cover the whole ground. They do not reproduce
the picture of the Early Church either literally or
in principle and essence, but they are included and
absorbed in it. It is as if a basket were set before
us laden with all manner of fruit and flowers, and
as if a hand were thrust into it, first here and then
there, and took out at each place a handful of its
contents. The fruit is genuine fruit, and the flowers
are genuine flowers; but more of both is left
behind. This is what appears to me to have happened to
the advocates of both the Congregational and Pres
byterian ideals. Their method seems to be eclectic.
The one takes a handful here, and the other takes

The Primitive Model 99
a handful there ; but in each case it is a handful,
and not the whole.
I willingly admit that, when one takes a com
petent exponent of the Congregational theory like
Dr. Vernon Bartlet, or a competent exponent of the
Presbyterian theory like Dr. T. M. Lindsay, one
recognizes at once abundance of truth in both.
I would invite them, or other writers on the same
sides, to read through the lengthy statement which
has preceded, and see if there is not sentence after
sentence which has their cordial approval. I should
myself have no difficulty in picking out such sen
tences, which could be placed in parallel columns
with others of their own. And these would relate,
not to secondary and unimportant matters, but to
points that with them are points of principle. My
criticism would relate, not — or in very rare cases — •
to that which they affirm, but to that which they
deny. They seem to me to come to an end too
soon ; and the end is sometimes rather abrupt.
There is a point at which their tone changes, and
their language, which has hitherto been that of
warm acceptance and sympathy, begins to be dis
paraging and condemnatory. That is not like the
processes of nature ; and it is there that such a
statement as Mr. Turner's seems to me to have the
advantage. For instance, I feel sure that Dr. Bartlet will
accept the attractive picture of the primitive Chris
tian congregations — ^bishop and people in closest

100 The Primitive Church and Reunion
touch with each other, the laity active, and the
whole community eager in the cause of religion,
and ready to incur for it sacrifice and martyrdom.
And yet he has a tendency, both in this and in
a stUl earlier stage, to minimize (as it seems to me)
the influences which made for unity between the
congregations. He can write a sentence like this :
As a rule, the superior or more inspired ministry
was one at large, while the humbler practical type
was strictly localized, confined to the single con
gregation to which its holders belonged.'
And yet, although this superior ministry is distinctly
recognized, and although stress is laid upon its
higher endowment, when the field comes to be
surveyed as a whole, its functions, and especially
its unifying functions, seem to fall into the back
ground. The local community is treated as a unit
complete in itself. The idea of the collective Church
— the Church as One — seems to be forgotten. What
may be called the ' plastic force ' inherent in it drops
out of sight.
I can of course understand the fascination of the
primitive stage. The early days of a religious society
nearly always have a charm which appears to be
lost as time goes on. When zeal is high, and dis-
cipleship select, and motives pure, and the selfish
instincts in abeyance, the freshness of the dawn
^ Paper read at the Third International Congregational
Council (Edinburgh, 1908), Beport, p. 214.

The Primitive Model 101
still seems to be abroad ; the dust and heat of the
journey are not yet felt. And these happy qualities
are apt to be idealized even beyond what they
deserve ; the other side of the picture escapes us ;
survivals from the state before conversion (as we
see them, for instance, in an epistle like First
Corinthians) do not obtrude themselves upon the
vision. All problems are easier so long as a society
is smaU. That appears to me, if I may say so, to
be the faUacy of Congregationalism. I do not blame
it, because it is always good for us to be guided by
an ideal ; and the first days lend themselves to an
ideal construction more readily than those which
follow. But that which looks like degeneration, and
is in fact within its limits really degeneration, is,
after aU, only the inevitable price that has to be
paid for enlargement and expansion. All that is
exceUently brought out by Mr. Turner, and I have
nothing to add to his exposition, much of which is
new as well as true.
I do not wish to be controversial ; I find no fault
with those who adopt a Congregational ideal, so
long as they keep within their own borders and do
not make aggressive raids into the territory that
lies outside them. I could only wish that they
would accustom themselves to read history a little
more dispassionately, and apply to all ages the same
measure that they apply to some. Consequences
that clearly follow from definite historical causes
are not, as such, a proper subject for either praise

102 The Primitive Church and Reunion
or blame. I would commend to those who think
otherwise, or who write and speak as if they thought
otherwise, certain wise words with which Dr. Hatch
introduces his sketch of The Growth of Church Insti
tutions (London, 1887).
The differences are great when an ancient is put
side by side with a modern form. But between the
ancient and modern form lies a long series of changes,
which are linked together by the strong bond of his
torical continuity, and which pass into one another
by an almost imperceptible transition. Each link
in the series carries with it its own justification, if
it is found to be a natural and inevitable result of
historical circumstances, a modification of an institu
tion or a usage which was forced upon a community
by the needs of a particular time. It is true that a
change which has once established itself has not
gained by the fact of such establishment a right to
perpetuity ; but, on the other hand, it does not foUow
that such a modification of a Christian institution
should be abolished as soon as the historical circum
stances which gave rise to it have passed away.
We cannot, without risk of enormous loss, and only
under the rarest circumstances, cut the moorings
which bind us to the past {op. cit., p. 5).
This book on The Growth of Church Institutions
will be found very profitable reading, as taking up
the story from the point at which Mr. Turner lays
it down. It does for the Early Mediaeval period
what he has done for the Patristic period. It con
tinues, more especially for the West, the line of
development which he has traced for the Roman
Empire as a whole, but more particularly for the

The Primitive Model 103
East. The Congregational system is really, in its
ultimate foundations, a product of a state of things
that was characteristic of Graeco-Eoman antiquity.
It belongs of right to a civilization of which the
unit is the smaU or moderate-sized city. It finds
its exact model in countries like Italy or Syria or
the western coasts of Asia Minor, which were just
those that in the early centuries of the Christian
era were most flourishing and in which Christianity
spread with the greatest rapidity. The conditions
were quite different in Gaul or Britain, where cities
were few and where there were wide spaces of open
country. Dr. Hatch has traced with great skill the
effects that were due, on the one hand, to the plant
ing of private chapels on the great landed estates,
and, on the other hand, to the institution of mis
sionary bishops which spread from the British
Isles. These gradually passed into the large terri
torial sees that were characteristic of Feudalism.
The process was so gradual, and so necessary and
inevitable, that it is wrong to denounce it and give
it a bad name.
This is one fruitful cause of the present-day
opposition to Episcopacy. Its critics appear to be
unable to get out of their minds the mediaeval
conception of the bishop. He is still for them the
' proud prelate ', the ' despot ', and the ' autocrat '.
I imagine that most of our Anglican bishops would
tell a different tale. Except for the size of their
dioceses, there is not much of the autocrat left

104 The Primitive Church and Reunion
about them. If there is any autocracy in the
Church of England, it is rather that of the parish
priest entrenched within his freehold. No human
institution is perfect. All aUke are dependent upon
the characters and dispositions of those who work
them. If due allowance is made for this ; if the
various forms of pressure are considered from which
limitations of freedom may come, the Anglican
Church, even in its present condition, may well
bear comparison with any. And it is always seek
ing to reform itself by the nicer adjustment of tasks
and burdens.

Ill

So far as I can judge, it seems to me that in
Harnack's book and Mr. C. H. Turner's monograph,
taken together, we have a statement of the facts
relating to Episcopacy from the side of the historian
that wiU not easily be improved upon. It is true
that Mr. Turner's half of this statement is focused
primarily upon the fourth century, and that the
earlier portion is an introduction leading up to this,
and subordinated to it. If the author would go
over the same ground on a fuUer scale, it would be
very welcome ; though his language is so precise
and so weU considered that we are rarely left in
doubt as to the view that he would take. To me

The Primitive Model 105
that view seems to be as satisfactory as anything
that I could hope for; and it is supplemented by
Harnack's book on points where further detaU
might seem to be needed. These two appreciations
of the historical position are before the world, and
they furnish what I believe to be an excellent
starting-point for future discussion. In the next
few months or years we may look for criticism
which wUl help either to establish or to refute
them. But, in the meantime, what more can be done by
way of furthering the great object that is in view ?
It is often expressed in the form that we are called
upon to test the validity of Ministries and Sacra
ments. On that I would ask leave to say a few
words. Nothing is gained by being too squeamish. We
must look facts in the face on all sides. At the
same time, I must confess that I have a very con
siderable point of conscience on this question of the
vaUdity of Sacraments and Orders. It seems to me
to be a very delicate matter, and, indeed, scarcely
admissible, for one Christian body to take upon
itself to pronounce upon the validity, or otherwise,
of the ministrations of another.' I think that at
least the question ought not to be put in that bald
and sweeping form.
If that is done at all, it should not be in the way
' [On this subject see also some excellent remarks in Founda
tions, p. 386.]
ie09 O

106 The Primitive Church and Reunion
of general public discussions. It is, perhaps, another
thing for the responsible leaders of one communion
to examine, as it were, in camera, the credentials of
another. The calm, severe, technical atmosphere
of such an examination is perhaps sufficient safe
guard. The formulae in use on such occasions have
been handed down from the past, and they can be
handled in the way in which technical terms are
usually handled by experts.
But it is another thing where appeal is made to
a wider public. When the inquiry begins to probe
at all deep, it soon ceases to be good for either party
to the case. It is injurious to the susceptibilities of
the one to have its ultimate credentials canvassed,
and perhaps challenged ; and, for the party which
canvasses and challenges, it is just as bad to lay
itself open to the horrible temptations of self-
complacency and censoriousness.
And, what is still worse, on the broad general
question of the validity of a particular ministry, it
seems to me that no human tribunal is really com
petent to judge. The competence of human judge
ment is reaUy confined to smaller issues than this.
And it seems to me that it would be well if it were
rigorously so confined. It may be said to be only
a question of wording ; but, even if that were true,
stiU I would urge that the one form of words is
more defensible than the other, just because of its
limitation. As in so many other matters, we cannot
avoid some kind of judgement. Each individual

T'he Primitive Model 107
among us is compelled to make up his mind what
form of ministry he desires to be under. If he was
born in that which has his aUegiance, still he must
be prepared to justify his continuance in it. This
imphes something of comparison, and something of
examination. Hence, to say that a particular form
of ministry has a ' defect ', or in wider terms that it
is ' defective ', may well be a conclusion that cannot
be avoided. But this is not to go nearly so far as
to caU it ' invalid '. We may be sure that every
ministry under the sun, at least in its individual
members, has its defects and is defective. But it
is not therefore invaUd. God alone knows what
accumulation of defects constitutes invalidity. He
can strike the balance of one quality with another
as we cannot do. It may well be that the decisive
elements in His sight are entirely beyond our ken.
That does not absolve us from the responsibility of
making up our minds on matters that are within
our competence. In regard to these, we must do
the best we can.

IV

What further have we to say as to our practical
attitude towards competing conceptions of the Chris
tian Ministry ? Is there anything more to suggest
that may help to ease the situation ?
I have expressed my belief that, if we have not

108 The Primitive Church and Reunion
got it already, we are at least not far from obtaining
a general view of the course of events in the early
centuries that may claim to be sound as history. It
will be a great step forwards if in the next ten years
that result can be generally agreed upon. A state
ment has been made with which I think that the
Episcopalian bodies at least ought to be content.
If they are not, it is incumbent upon them to show
cause why they are not. But I do not myself think
that substantial exception can be taken to the state
ment that lies before us — a statement, not from the
hands of controversialists, but from the hands of
responsible historians. I am not so sure about the
non-Episcopalian side. It is possible that there
may be criticisms to be made that are not obvious
to me. In any case, the turn is with them. It is
for them to say what points they would like to have
stated differently.
In this respect the issues are being perceptibly
narrowed. Over the whole ground of the history,
as history, it ought not to be long before a verdict
by consent is reached.
But if that is so, what then ? How is the confes
sional question affected? Is there any change in
the way in which that ought to be presented?
I believe there is ; and, if there is, I believe that
the tension ought not to be so great.
The point may perhaps be stated thus :
Hitherto Episcopacy has been presented mainly
as a dogma ; it is a dogma on which one of the

The Primitive Model 109
parties has made up its mind, and which it offers,
to be taken or left. But what is a dogma ? It is
a summary proposition, extracted from the data,
and expressed barely in the concisest possible form.
It expects a direct answer. Aye or No. I suppose
that, in the last resort, this sharp and bare anti
thesis is inevitable. But, at least in the discussion
stage, I submit that we should avoid it as much
as we can. It is better to think in terms of the
concrete than in terms of the abstract. I would
say to those who find themselves confronted with
a cut-and-dried dogma, Do not consider it in this
form, but clothe it in flesh and blood. Translate it
back into the forms of history ; present it to your
minds, not as a proposition, but as a picture —
a picture embodied in all the richness and fullness
of detail that naturally belongs to it, with all the
Hghts and shades of nature, and with all the subtle
interweaving of parts and whole.
My belief is that if this attitude were taken up
and sustained for some time, the minds of men
would be in a better position to approach each
other. They would not be repelled by the necessity
of saying Aye or No ; but room would be given for
those unconscious and semi-conscious processes of
adjustment and approximation of which the mind
is capable when it is left to find its way without
hindrance and without dictation.
I should be the more hopeful of such a result,
because it seems to me that the Nonconformist

110 The Primitive Church and Reunion
mind especiaUy, in its strong and increasing aspira
tions after unity, is letting its imagination soar to
heights that in the past have hardly been accessible
to it.
I have already quoted from the proceedings of
the Third International Congregational Council, held
at Edinburgh in 1908. Many notable papers were
read on that occasion. I was particularly struck
by one from the Eev. Oliver Huckel, D.D., of Balti
more, U.S.A. His whole paper is pitched at a high
imaginative level, but I would call attention to the
foUowing passage :
In the whole spirit and trend of these modern
times, I think we may say, if we interpret the
Christian tendencies and manifestations aright, there
are two very significant possibUities looming before
the churches of our Congregational communion in
the world to-day.
One possibility is — by our thoughts, practice, and
contention to hold a rigid and extreme EvangeUcal
idea, to keep it austere and exclusive, to make it the
one type and standard for aU Christian thought and
life, and in this way to continue to emphasize the
differences, and to widen the breach and to keep
militant the antagonism in the divided Church of
Christ. The other possibiUty is — by a larger spirit, a fuller
love, and a more comprehensive grasp of truth to
enter into a greater Evangelical idea, to make it so
full, vital, and comprehensive, in the truest sense
Catholic, that it shaU make for the essential unity
of the spirit among all those differing communions
who stUl call themselves by the name of Christ.

The Primitive Model 111
I do believe with aU my heart in the Evangelical
idea. But I beUeve most profoundly that it needs
a freer spirit, a larger vision, a more spiritual and
intellectual comprehensiveness, a deeper and stronger
and more inclusive content of meaning than is now
prevalent in most of our Protestant churches.
Brethren, the truth itself, I make bold to say, is
a larger thing than is contained in either extreme of
the Catholic or Evangelical contentions. Nor is it
some golden mean. But it is found, I am sure, in
a fuUer comprehension of the absolute truth that
underUes each position. Here is the point of pos
sible reconciUation — in something greater and richer
than either the present Catholic or the present Evan
geUcal position. It is heroic, I know, to contend for
an EvangeUcal principle ; it may become more heroic
to recognize that the divine Ufe and work in the world
may need more than that most valuable principle and
to contend for the full inheritance of the saints
(op. cit, pp. 199, 200).
Now, I know it may be said that aspirations of
this kind are attractive and comparatively easy, so
long as they are kept vague and general, but that
the rub is felt when the attempt is made to apply
them in concrete detail. I would point out, in
passing, that in these particular aspirations there
are some individual touches that have a value of
their own. But I take them as representing, not
so much a formula or programme as a frame of
mind. And I would venture to suggest that if such
a frame of mind became common, not in any one
Christian body alone, but in all, the way would be
prepared as it cannot easily be by any other means

112 The Primitive Church and Reunion
for that ultimate solution towards which the faces
of so many among us are set and their steps are
tending. It is in the wide diffusion of what I con
ceive to be a reaUy right frame of mind that I see
the best hope for the future. The presence of it
heightens the prospect that, in the field of study, as
weU as in that of practice^ — and perhaps in the field
of study before it is possible to make any great
advance in practice — labours begun apart may con
verge towards a common end.

THE PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIAN
REUNION IN 1912

IV
THE PROSPECTS OP CHRISTIAN REUNION IN 1912
[October, 1912]
It is now rather more than a year since I wrote
the first of three articles in the Contemporary Review
on the Reunion of Christendom — partly on the
general question, and partly on a particular aspect
of it. It happened that, accidentally but unavoid
ably, the third article was separated by an interval
of some months from the other two, and I was
conscious as I wrote it, that in the interval the
situation as a whole had undergone a considerable
change. I am encouraged to think that it may be
worth while to look around us once again and see
where we stand at the present time in relation to
this great subject.

A superficial observer might easily suppose that
the Reunion of Christendom was further off than it
seemed. At least three forward movements in that
direction have been brought to a standstill.
I see it stated in the papers that in Canada pro
posals for organic union between the Presbyterian

116 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Church of Canada and the Methodist and Congrega
tional Churches have been abandoned for the
present. In my own communion I understand that
a similar fate has overtaken the negotiations which
had been going on between the Presbyterian Church
of Australia and the Anglican Union and other
Churches.^ While — more significant than either of
these repulses — I am told that the striking demonstra
tion in America which led to the appointment of a
Commission for promoting a world-wide Congress
on Faith and Order ^ is not likely to be hurried ;
the Commission appears to be proceeding with
commendable caution.
In the spring of last year these movements rather
filled the stage, and they have now retired into the
background. Does that mean any real and serious
set-back to the cause of Reunion ?
I do not think it does. So far as the Anglican
Communion was involved, I cannot say that I was
ever sanguine. I had a strong feeling that the time
was not yet ripe for any such far-reaching proposals.
And, if that is so, they are better in a state of
quiescence. It will be observed that both the
Anglican movements took place at a distance from
the centre. For, after all, in these matters — for the
present, at least — England is stUl ' the predominant
partner '. It is here that the differences which now
divide us took their rise ; it is here that they strike
' [See pp. 27 ff.]
¦" [See pp. 37 ff.]

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 117
their roots most deeply into the past; it is here
that there are accumulated the greatest stores of
experience and knowledge for dealmg with them.
And in proportion as religious opinion in this
country is tenacious, it is also slowly moving. The
difficulties to be overcome are enormous ; they are
certainly not to be put aside by the wave of any
magician's wand. Hence, to one who sits quietly
in his chair at home and is not carried away by the
enthusiasm and applause at public meetings, the pro
portions of things are apt to seem different; the
hidden forces count for more than those which
appear upon the surface ; the dark background
looms more ominously, and the patches of Ught
that play across the front of the landscape are seen
to be more fugitive.
For these reasons I think that we may take very
calmly such temporary rebuffs as the cause of Re
union may seem to have sustained. They affect, it
is true, the party of action ; but it is evident that in
the Home Church at least the party of action is very
much in the minority. There is almost, I might
say, a general understanding that the time for action
is still a long way off; much water wUl have to run
under the bridges before it is reached. If it was
not clear a year ago, I think it must be clear, or
becoming clear now, that a great deal of what is
called ' spade work ' wiU have to be done before any
great overt advance is made. We shall have to dig
deep, and dig about the foundations, for a long time

118 The Primitive Church and Reunion
stUl to come, before we can begin to think about
any great reconstruction.

II
But in the meantime, if we look at Christendom
as a whole, one really substantial and important
step has been taken which may go some way to
console even the party of action. No one doubts
that Eeunion, when it comes, will come piecemeal.
The extent of ground to be covered is so vast that
only small and isolated portions of it can be worked
over at any one time. Particular churches, and
particular groups of churches, wiU have to compose
their differences before there can be any question
of bringing together the great outstanding com
munions. The Eeformation initiated a period not
only of division but of subdivision, and the first
step on the road to Eeunion wiU doubtless be the
closing up of these subdivisions.
From this point of view, the chief centre of
interest once more reverts to Edinburgh.' As I look
back, I am still impressed as much as I was a year
ago, and even more, with the great importance
of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910.
The Conference partly generated and partly brought
to a head a state of feeling that was eminently
favourable to Eeunion. ^ [See pp. 14 ff. sup.]

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 119
The American demonstration of which I have
spoken was a direct outcome of this; but its in
direct effects have been felt more widely still. These
have naturally been somewhat vague and intangible ;
it would be wrong to connect too exclusively what
has just happened at Edinburgh in 1912 with what
happened there in 1910. The events of 1912 have
certainly had direct and continuous antecedents of
their own ; for the main line of causation and con
nexion there is no need to look outside these ; but
at the same time it is probable enough that the
Conference of 1910 was a contributory cause to a
greater extent than may have been consciously
realized at the moment.
The conspicuous phenomenon has been the strength
and energizing force of the desire for unity, not only
as exhibited in individuals, but even more as ex
pressing itself in corporate feeUng and corporate
action. The evident fact was that the desire for
unity was ' in the air ' ; the whole atmosphere was
deeply impregnated with it. And one of the causes
that contributed to this was, I must needs think,
the Hngering influence of 1910. Indeed, I believe
that influence will be long before it leaves its own
classic ground. We might, I dare say, if we liked,
put it the other way, and say that the negotiations
which had been going on between the Established
Church and the United Free Church ' were among
the contributory causes which prepared for the
' [See p. 14 sup., and also p. 6.]

120 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Conference of 1910 and made it such a great success.
But the outside world will naturally think of 1910
first, and of 1912 second.
The course of events seems to have been some
thing of this kind. For a full generation there had
been a desire, which proved to be a growing desire,
on the part of the Established Church, to come
to terms with its neighbour. In 1907 this desire
received authoritative and public expression, which
was duly reciprocated by the United Free Church.
In 1909 the two bodies appointed committees with
instructions to confer together ; and the conferences
thus begun were continued in a conciUatory spirit.
The initiative seems mainly to have come from the
side of the Establishment, but the advances were
not less cordially received. Last year proceedings
had gone so far that the Established Committee
took upon itself to sketch in outline the kind of
procedure which it thought might be taken. The
other side acknowledged the value of this sketch,
but excused itself from discussing it on the ground
that it did not enter sufficiently into detail. Each
committee reported year by year what had been
done, and year by year was reappointed by its own
Assembly, with instructions to proceed. The in
structions were purposely kept vague, but the Estab
lished Committee, encouraged by the reply made to
it, boldly formulated its proposals, and submitted
them in the form of a Memorandum at the begin
ning of April ; and that was the position in which

T'he Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 121
matters stood when the two Assemblies met at the
end of May of the present year. At last the issues
had been brought definitely to a head, and the time
had come for the crucial decision to be taken. Were
the Churches to go forward, or were they to go
back? In the one case unanimously, in the other
by an overwhelming majority, they decided to go
forward. From a formal point of view, this decision stands
for very Httle. Neither Church is pledged to any
thing ; neither Committee even is pledged to any
thing ; the discussion of details has not yet begun.
The only tangible result is that there is now a basis
for negotiations. And yet I imagine that most
people "wUl feel that the decision is reaUy crucial.
The Rubicon was a small river, and its passage was
uncontested ; yet the crossing of the Rubicon meant
the difference between peace and war. The crossing
of the Scottish Rubicon means peace — not now, but
some day. The day may be distant ; there may be
not a little contending, and stiff contending, before
it is reached. But sooner or later — it may be later
rather than sooner — ^the end desired is bound to
come. All honour to the men to whose patience and
statesmanship it is due that things have been brought
so far as they have. I am not in the least behind
the scenes ; I cannot claim any familiarity with
the recent history of the Scottish Churches. But
I gather from the papers that the mover of the

122 The Primitive Church and Reunion
motion to proceed in the Assembly of the Church
of Scotland, who has also been Chairman of the
Committee and who made the most impressive
speech in introducing his motion, was Lord Balfour
of Burleigh ; the seconder was Dr. Wallace William
son, of St. Giles's, Edinburgh ; and special reference
was made to the Procurator of the Church (Sheriff
C. N. Johnston), who appears to have taken a lead
ing part in drafting the Memorandum. The mover
of the ' deliverance ' in the Assembly of the United
Free Church, who had also acted as Chairman of
the Committee of that Church, was Dr. John Young ;
and the seconder was Sir Andrew H. L. Eraser,
until recently Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. The
introductory speeches in both houses reached a high
level of earnestness and statesmanship, and im
pressed a tone upon the debates, the effect of which
is not likely soon to die out.

Ill
It may seem strange to put by the side of the
positive action of the two Scottish Churches the BiU
for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the
Church in Wales. It may seem that, by comparison,
the introduction of this Bill could only be described
as something negative, an act of hostiUty directed
against a particular Church, or branch of a Church,

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 123
which could only leave increased estrangement and
bitterness behind it, and the effect of which would
have to be lived down. At first sight, certainly, this
does not look like a step on the road to the Eeunion
of Christendom; and it is, of course, true that it
was not intended as such a step, and its immediate
and superficial effects are not likely to be conciliating
and uniting. StiU, I shall venture upon the paradox
of expressing my beUef that the historian twenty
years or less from the present time, as he looks back
over the course of events, wiU see in the story of the
movement for the Disestablishment and Disendow
ment of the Church in Wales a landmark also in the
other movement towards the Reunion of Churches.
The reason which induces me to take this more
hopeful view is because of the light which the
history of the movement has thrown upon a change
of feeling that is coming over English Noncon
formists. No doubt the BUI, as it stands, is of the nature
of an attack upon the Church in Wales. It was
introduced in pursuance of the traditional Liberal
and Nonconformist policy which is opposed to the
existence of State Churches in any form. The moral
force behind the Bill has been, and is, derived from
the strength of this opposition. Welsh Noncon
formists in particular have shown themselves keen
supporters of disestablishment and disendowment.
They have not faUed to do so on this occasion. The
Welsh have the gift of speech ; and there has been

124 The Primitive Church and Reunion
no lack of strong and uncompromising speech in
support of the Bill. And yet, though the speech
has been strong, there has been perceptibly less of
bitterness behind it. The controversy as a whole
has been conducted on both sides with much less
bitterness than in times past. A Churchman cannot
help pointing with pride to the admirable example
that has been set by the leaders on his side of the
question, notably by the Welsh Bishops, with the
Bishop of St. David's at then- head. But, on the
other side, too, there has been less of animus and
of violence than we have been accustomed to see.
And, if I am not mistaken in my impression — as
I may be, because I cannot profess to have foUowed
the details of the struggle at aU closely — the tone
of the controversy has actuaUy tended to become
milder as it has proceeded. Something of this
should be set do'vvn to the special credit of the
Prime Minister, who has not only been conspicuously
moderate and restrained in language, but has also
shown a real desire to temper as far as possible the
blow that he was deaHng.
Even more remarkable than this has been the
evident uneasiness on the part of a number of
individual Nonconformists, both tn England and in
Wales, at the thought of taking away endowments
that were being spent, and — they could not help
seeing — ^weU and conscientiously spent, in the cause
of reHgion. Although they started with an inherited
disHke of the use of endowments in this way, they

TJie Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 125
Hked stiU less the idea of handing over to secularism
and secularists that which was being devoted to
the service of religion. To a looker-on it seems as if
this feeling was increasing in force, and the ulti
mate fate of the BUI is becoming more and more
uncertain. The utter disinterestedness of this attitude on the
part of many Nonconformists is very striking. Of
course it is true that they are a minority, and
perhaps numerically a not very large minority, of
the Nonconformist body as a whole. But this is
a case where every individual counts, and counts
for a great deal; and the wonder is that there
should be so many as there are.
Lord Balfour said, addressing the Moderator :
' Sir, I think the spiritual temperature of Scotland
is rising.' Is it not true that the spiritual tempera
ture of the whole United Kingdom is rising? I
would fain believe that it is, and that the signs of
it are to be seen all around us.

IV
It would be difficult to over-estimate the impor
tance of these two things, the Scottish Movement
on the one hand and the indications of a change
of temper in British Nonconformity on the other.
Taken together, they hold out a promise that was

126 The Primitive Church and Reunion
not apparent on the horizon when I began these
articles. I do not doubt that the procedure of the two
Scottish Churches will serve as a model for any
future negotiations of the kind. That alone wiU
be a gain, and wUl make the way of mutual approach
easier. It may indeed be said, by way of discounting the
importance of this precedent, that there are no two
Churches on the face of the earth that are so near
each other to begin with as these two ; they are
alike in their views of Church order and govern
ment, alike in their standards of doctrine, ahke in
nationality and (to a large extent) in the habits and
modes of thought of their adherents.
FuU aUowance must be made for this. There is
but one really considerable difference between the
Churches standing in the way of union. That
difference is the conception of the relation between
Church and State. But that single difference is at
once fundamental and typical. It is fundamental,
inasmuch as it raises a question of principle ; the
difference between an established and a non-estab
lished Church has in the past proved a serious
obstacle. And it is typical, inasmuch as this one
case of the Scottish Churches will cover every case
where the like question can be raised. To us
especiaUy in the Church of England this is impor
tant, because we, too, are an Established Church in
the midst of others that are not established. In

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 127
our dealings with our own feUow members of the
same communion in America that is, I know, felt
to be a drawback, and perhaps a greater drawback
than might antecedently have been supposed.
The Memorandum put forward by the Committee
of the Church of Scotland certainly minimizes the
significance of the State connexion. And that is
quite in accordance with present tendencies in our
own Church. A vast majority in the Church of
England is little inclined to lay stress on the privi
leges attached to its connexion with the State, but
very keen to assert its independence and to resist
any form of State interference. From this point of
view the Scottish precedent may well be useful.
If that is so, a yet greater advantage may be
derived from the way in which our neighbours deal
with the question of endowments. It is true that
that question is not as yet directly raised. The
EstabUshed Committee has only laid down that
in no case wUl the Church consent to have its
endowments secularized. If that position alone
were gained, it would be a clear step in advance.
And I should hope that, with the help of the many
Nonconformists who are beginning to have con
scientious scruples on this head, there was a good
prospect of an agreement being reached on this
subject. It is, of course, to be expected that the
treatment of endowments wiU give rise to long and
serious discussions in Scotland, as weU as in Eng
land and in Wales. There are clearly members of

128 The Primitive Church and Reunion
the United Free Church who are sensitive as to any
admission of endowment as a principle. But, on
the other hand, it is to be noted that the leaders of
both Churches are sanguine on this head. The
seconder of the motion before the General Assembly
of the Established Church spoke distinctly in this
sense : and the mover in the other Assembly said
twice over that if the general question were settled
the question of ' teinds ' (tithes) would settle itself.
Those who are outside need not trouble themselves
with speculations as to what exactly was in his
mind : they may be content to wait and see what
the combined wisdom of the two Committees recom
mends. The greatest advantage which the Scottish
negotiations possess over the Welsh Bill, and (as
weU as I can remember) over all previous public
proposals on the subject of Establishment, is that
the solution which they propose is constructive,
whereas all others have been simply destructive.
I feel sure that there are many members of Estab
lished Churches who will be wiUing enough to
entertain proposals of this kind. It is the process
of levelUng down that is distasteful to them, the
proposal to take away from the service of God
property and buildings and rights and duties that
have hitherto been dedicated to that service. If,
apart from this, anything can be done to equalize
the standing and opportunities of the different re
ligious bodies, there are many who would welcome
the change.

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 129

It may seem a somewhat steep descent to come
down from these large public movements and con
siderations of high poHcy to an unobtrusive event,
or projected event, in the world of Hterature. And
yet I do not think that the descent is by any means
so great as it seems. This whole series of articles
has been inspired by the belief that action is in the
long run subordinate to thought. Measures that are
taken without being thought out, both in their
principles and in their consequences, are sure to
be undone and to need doing over again. I said
at the outset of this article that what is most
wanted at the present time is ' spade-work ', pre
paration of the soU to receive the good seed : untU
the soil is weU dug, however thickly the seed may
be scattered, it wiU not sprout and grow.
We may express the same thing by another
metaphor which is perhaps more appropriate to
literary work. The first thing to be done — all over
the world — is to create an atmosphere. When an
atmosphere has been created that is reaUy favour
able to Reunion, Reunion wUl come — ^but not a day
sooner. That, I beHeve, is a conviction that we
must get weU into our minds if we are to labour
to any profit. It is this thought which leads me to
ascribe to the Uterary proposal of which I speak
a degree of importance that may not seem to belong

130 The Primitive Church and Reunion
to it. It is as yet only a proposal, but one that is
in a fair way to be carried into effect. The intention
is to start a new Quarterly, to be caUed The Con-
strtictive Quarterly, and I beHeve that the first number,
¦wUl in all probabUity appear about Easter, 1913.
I do not think that I shaU be unduly revealing
secrets — for there is, indeed, nothing secret about it
• — if I add that it is to bear the very comprehensive
sub-title 'A Journal of the Faith and Work and
Thought of Christendom'. This ecumenical title
is to correspond to ecumenical contents. The idea
is, on the nearer plane, to bring together writers of
aU Churches and all schools on the one common
ground of a Christianity which claims to be con
structive. In this way it is hoped, on the further
plane, to work towards — only to work towards, but
really to work towards — the more distant goal of
Reunion. The initiative comes from America. The
editor, who is also ' the author and only begetter '
of the whole project, is Mr. Silas McBee, who has
been well known for many years as editor of the
New York Churchman, and whose name is associated
with many good causes. In connexion with one of
these causes, the Student Volunteer Movement, he
recently made a journey to Russia and the East —
Egjrpt, Palestine, and Constantinople — an account of
which has been published in a book caUed An Eirenic
Itinerary. I doubt very much whether there is any
one Uving who has such intimate relations with so
many leading men of so many different creeds,

The Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 131
including the Church of Rome and the Orthodox
Churches of the East. No one else could have
brought together and united in a common task so
many eminent writers of such varied antecedents.
I may take upon myself to say that this first condi
tion of success in such a task is already assured.
For my own part I must confess to being very
hopeful of the result — i.e. of tangible good results
— from this new adventure. Perhaps I am not less
hopeful because I had to be converted to it. The
prospect in itself of adding one to the number of
existing Reviews did not seem to me promising :
but this particular Review, with its unique aim and
unique range of contributions already secured, seems
to me to hold out possibiUties that are not to be
found elsewhere. And the very modesty of the aim
— nothing more than the simple juxtaposition of the
thoughts of different minds, differently trained, -with
different surroundings and with Httle in common
beyond the one dominant aspiration — seems to me
to exempt this scheme from many of the difficulties
and drawbacks that would attach to almost any
other.

VI
From one literary item I pass to another. The
two mtermediate articles in this series were taken
up with a sketch of what seemed to me to be the

132 The Primitive Church and Reunion
present position of research in regard to the consti
tution of the Primitive Church as the basis of all
our modern theories.
I threw out this sketch tentatively, as perhaps
combining the features in regard to which students
of aU schools would be most agreed. At the same
time I invited questions and criticism, as the best
way to test the foundations of the structure on
which any of us might propose to buUd.
It was not at aU in response to this invitation,
but quite independently, that my last article had
only just appeared when a question was raised
which really goes to the root of the whole matter.
In the Journal of Theological Studies for April, 1912,
the Dean of WeUs — whom we still cannot help
thinking of by his old title as Dean of Westminster
— Dr. Armitage Robinson, had an article on 'The
Problem of the Didache' which might be called
iconoclastic, if the icon were an ' idolon of the cave ',
such as is apt to obtain currency for want of sufficient
testing. It is quite true, as the Dean thinks, that the ques
tion is one of primary importance. If the Dean's
view of the Didache holds good, many other opinions
wUl have to be revised — ^including aU that I have
ever myself written, or even thought, on the consti
tution of the Primitive Church. For I must confess
that from the first moment of the discovery of the
Didache I have continued to think of it as the real
key to the situation: it has seemed to me exactly

T'he Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 133
what was wanted to bring aU the other facts together,
and to give them cohesion and unity.
It wiU be seen at once that this opinion is at
the opposite pole from the Dean's. But indeed his
article is extremely modest and tentative. He only
asks to have the question of the Didache reopened ;
and that of course he has, simply for the asking.
Yet I doubt whether so far the common view,
which dates from Harnack's first discussion of the
subject in 1884, is even shaken.
What the Dean has reaUy given us is a very
close and deUcate examination of the use of the
New Testament in the Didache. In this respect his
article is quite a model in its kind, and I for one
should accept it as practicaUy final. In every single
instance — whether in regard to the Acts, or the
PauHne Epistles, or the Fourth Gospel and First
Epistle of St. John — I beHeve that he has proved
his point ; and he has added considerably to the Hst
of aUusions hitherto acknowledged.
But, beyond this, what has he done? He has
thrown out hints — ^they are in any case not more —
which I am afraid that I do not quite understand,
and am stiU less able to follow.
For instance, the Dean writes to this effect about
the history of the book :
The result of these and other investigations has
been to show that the Two Ways, either as a Jewish
or as a Christian manual, had a considerable vogue
in early times ; but that the Teaching of the Twelve

134 The Primitive Church and Reunion
Apostles has left comparatively few traces of its cir
culation — ^hardly any, indeed, which are of value for
determining its date. Much light has been thrown on
the antecedents of the first part of the book ; but the
second part, which deals with Church order, is still
an unsolved riddle. It does not seem to fit in any
where, in either time or place. The community
which it presupposes is out of relation to all our
knowledge of Church history. It is as much an
isolated phenomenon after aU our researches as
when it surprised us at its first appearance.
I fear that I cannot recognize this as an adequate
— and, if any one else had been writing, I might
have said even as an accurate — statement. Two
facts stand out conspicuously in the history of the
Didache. One is, that its claims were seriously con
sidered by the Early Church for a place in Holy
Scripture. Eusebius rejects the claim, whUe Athana
sius accepts the book by name as at least ' profitable
for instruction' along with the Old Testament
Apocrypha. And these discussions make it probable
that Clement of Alexandria had in view the whole
Didache when he quotes as Scripture a saying from
the Two Ways. The other fact is, that the Didache
is incorporated almost bodUy in the Apostolic Con
stitutions towards the end of the fourth century.
There are other backward links of connexion of a
slighter kind. In the face of these facts it does not
seem to me possible to speak of anything like
' isolation '. Indeed, the evidence is quite as much
as we can expect in proportion to the amount of
extant Hterature earUer than the CouncU of Nicaea.

Tlie Prospects of Christian Reunion in 1912 135
I myself believe the Didache to be older than the
Epistle of Barnabas. This would place it some
where about the last two decades of the first cen
tury, into which (so far as I can form an opinion)
it seems to fit exactly. It comes in just at the
moment of transition and rapid development which
foUowed upon the end of the ApostoHc Age. New
Testament functionaries, Hke the 'prophets' and
' apostles ' (in the wider sense), are stiU actively in
evidence, whUe the ' bishops ' are not yet differen
tiated from ' presbyters '. For locality, I should be
content to place it in some rather out of the way
Christian community of Syria or Palestine, perhaps
beyond the Jordan.
Another point which I fail to grasp is the infer
ence which the Dean would have drawn from the
writer's use of Scripture. Why does he so often
caU that use 'perverse'? No doubt the writer
had certain books vividly present to his mind, and
adapted phrases from them to his purpose. But
what is there pecuHar or suspicious in that ?
It would be to me much more strange if the book
were reaUy, as the Dean seems to think, a sort of
Uterary mystification, I have not much belief in
such mystifications at this early period and under
these primitive conditions. Where the Dean sees
recondite motive, I am inclined to see only a certain
naive simplicity. It may not be quite easy for us
to enter into this ; but that does not to my mind
suffice to discredit the book as a witness to facts.

136 The Primitive Church and Reunion
For these reasons I cannot anticipate any great
change in the estimate of the book that has hitherto
prevailed. At the same time I am not sorry that
the question has been raised. The more significant
a witness is, the more important is it that he should
be cross-examined and his evidence tested even with
some severity.

EPILOGUE
As this Httle book is leaving my hands there are
two more events which deserve to be chronicled.
One carries a decided step further the proposed
Conference on Faith and Order. ^ It is a public
announcement by the two EngUsh Primates of the
support which the Church of England is prepared
to give to the movement. As yet neither the date
nor the place of the Conference are fixed ; but it is
agreed that, as the initiative has hitherto come
from America, it should remain there, and that
the invitations should be issued by the American
branches of the different bodies taking part in it.
Along with this would go ' the possibUity or proba-
biUty that the ultimate conference when held would
be on American soU '. In the meantime a Committee
of twenty has been nominated by the Archbishops
who ' should watch the progress of the arrange
ments for the proposed conference, organize support
' [Seepp. 37ff., 116.]

Epilogue 137
and help in England for these endeavours, and
speciaUy stimulate general interest and regular and
widespread prayer in the matter '.
If I may be allowed to say so, these steps appear
to me to be eminently wise, and the composition of
the Committee is highly satisfactory.
The other event is once more literary. At the
end of November there was published by Messrs.
MacmiUan a book caUed Foundations : A Statement of
Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought, by seven
of the younger generation of Oxford FeUows and
Tutors. The importance of the book thus lies in
a certain representative character which it possesses
as expressing the views of the younger men at a
typical inteUectual centre. I may also add that, if
I am not mistaken, it fuUy deserves the attention
which it has received for the intrinsic value of its
contents. The book is marked by great sincerity in both
directions : it is at once thoroughly modern and
genuinely conservative in its effort to maintain fuU
continuity with the past. And it is particularly
noticeable that, on questions of more acute con
troversy, its method is predominantly synthetic ;
it does not so much deny or reject either side in the
debate as aim at combining what is best in both in
a higher synthesis.
This is in particular the method followed in deal
ing with the question of Eeunion. The treatment
of this subject has fallen to the Eev. A. E. J.

138 The Primitive Church and Reunion
EawUnson, Tutor of Keble. He takes it up in con
nexion with the general question of ' Authority ' in
the Church. He foUows very much the same lines
as these papers in dealing, first, with ' Authority
and Church Order', and then with 'Authority
and Eeunion ' ; there is also an appendix on ' The
Historical Origins of the Christian Ministry '. The
discussion of what may be caUed the Protestant
principle starts from an essay of Dr. Bartlet's in
a recent volume, Evangelical Christianity : its History
and Witness, edited by Dr. W. B. Selbie, Principal
of Mansfield CoUege. The essay deserves this
prominence by its earnest religious grasp of the
principle which it expounds. At the same time
I must needs think it somewhat one-sided in its
selection of facts and too confined in its interpreta
tion of history. Mr. Eawlinson seeks to redress the
balance, and in my opinion does so successfully.
I hardly think that he does justice to the position
of the ' presbyters ', who are quite as primitive as
the ' bishops ' and were as naturaUy and necessarily
taken over from the constitution of the Jewish syna
gogue. In regard to ApostoHcal Succession, I beHeve
that both -writers may find something to learn from
the passage of Harnack's quoted above (pp. 77 ff.).
But, as a whole, the discussion is a distinct advance
on the road to agreement by general consent, which
I cannot think is far off. After all, the Conference
on Faith and Order wiU have a good deal of col
lected and digested matter before it on which to
base its deHberations.

INDEX

American Churches, 22, 31 ff.,
37 ff., 116, 119 : see Federa
tion, CONPBEENCES.
Anglican Communion, 30 ff.,
116 ; in Australia, 27 ff.,
116 ; in Japan 22.
Apostle, 79 f., 88 f., 91, 135.
Apostolic Church Order, 56.
Apostolic Succession, 76-82,
138.
Arnold, Matthew, 85, 97.
Athanasius, 134.
Autocracy, 103 f.
Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 122,
125.
Bartlet, Vernon, 54 f., 65, 99 f.,
138.
Barthelemy, 59.
Beurlier, 59.
Bishop, functions of, 71 f., 88-
96 : see also Episcopate.
Bitton, W. Nelson, 21.
Bonomelli, Bp. of Cremona, 36.
Brent, Dr. C. H., Bp. of the
Philippine Islands, 39.
Briggs, C, A., 33.
Cambridge Mediaeval History,
5, 87-96.
Canadian Churches, 22 : see
also Fedekation.

Catholic idea, 110 f.
Cecil, Lord William Gascoyne,
34 f.
Cheng Ching-Yi, 19 f.
China, Church (or Churches)
in, 19 ff., 36.
Church Congress (1910), 28,
30.
Church, constitution of, 11 f.,
86 f., 45 ff. ; evolution of,
62 ff.; founding of, 70 f. ;
idea of, 64ff. ; titles of, 68;
unity of, 64 f., 100.
Civic unity, 92, 108.
Clement of Alexandria, 184.
Clement of Eome, 75, 89, 91.
clerus, 92, 95 f.
Conferences, World's Mission
ary, see Edinburgh ; Faith
and Order, 6, 37 ff., 116,
136 ff. ; Madras, 31 ; Nyasa
land, 32 ; Shanghai, 22 : see
Lambeth.
Congregationalism, 98-102.
Congregationalists, 24 f. ; in
America, 39 ff. ; in Canada,
116 ; at Edinburgh, 110.
Constructive Quarterly, 130 f.
Contemporary Review, 6, 47.
Deacon, functions of, 88 f.,
93 ff.

140

Index

Desjardins, 59.
Didache, 56, 74, 89, 132-6.
Differentiation of functions,
94 f.
Duchesne, Mgr. L., 59, 76.
Eastern Church: see Ortho
dox.
Edinburgh Conference (1910),
14ff., 31f., 34ff., 47, 118 f.
Endovements, 126 ff.
England, Church of, 33 ff. ;
rapprochement with Eome,
13 : see Anglican Commu
nion,
Episcopate, Historic, 27, 31,
33, 42, 45 ff., 71-81, 108 f. ;
Monarchical, 73 ff., 90 ;
Mediaeval, 103.
Eusebius, 134.
Evangelical Christianity, 138.
Evangelical idea, 110,
Federation, of Free Churches,
13 ; of American Churches,
22 ; of Canadian Churches,
22.
Foundations, 137.
Fraser, Sir Andrew, 17 f., 122.
Free Church (Scottish), 13 : see
also Scotland.
Free Churches, Federation of,
13.
Gairdner, W. H. T., 15, 23.
Gore, Dr. C. (Bp. of Oxford,
formerly of Birmingham),
11, 12, 21, 30 f., 36 f., 53 f.

Governing idea, 44.
Greer, Dr. D. H. (Bp. of New
York), 39.
Harnack, Adolf, 12, 55 ff.,
104 f., 133.
Hatch, E. (1835-89), 11, 53,
56, 58, 61 ff., 70, 102 f.
Headlam, A. C, 82.
Hermas, 74, 79.
Hort, F. J. A. (1828-92), 11,
51 ff., 65.
Huckel, 0., UOf.
Ignatian Epistles, 73, 90, 93.
India, Churches in, 31, 36.
Irenaeus, 79.
Japan, Church (or Churches)
in, 22, 32, 36.
Johnston, C. N., 122.
Laity, 89f., 91f.
Lambeth Conferences, 12,
27 ff., 39 ff.
' Lambeth Quadrilateral ', 41 f.
Liddon, H. P., 53, 70.
Lightfoot, Dr. J. B. (1828-
89), Bp. of Durham, 11,
52.
Lindsay, T. M., 11, 54f.,63,
99.
Local Churches, 88^90.
Loening, E., 12.
McBee, SHas, 129.
Methodists (English), 13 ;
Canadian, 116.

Index

141

Minor orders, 95.
Missions, 16 ff., 31 f.
Missionary Societies : London,
17, 19, 21, 31 ff.
Moberly, K. C. (1845-1903),
11, 51 f., 54.
MoneeavLX, 59.
Nicolai, Archbp., 36.
Nippon Sei Kotcwai, 22.
Nonconformists, Welsh and
English, 123-5 : see also
Free Churches, &c.
Ordination, 89.
Orthodox Church of the East,
35 f. : see Nicolai, Archbp.
Owen, Dr. J. (Bp. of St. David's),
124.
Pagan Analogies, 58 ff.
Pain, Dr. A. W. (Bp. of Gipps
land), 27 ff.
Palmer, Dr. E. J. (Bp. of
Bombay), 31, 43 ff.
Pan- Anglican Congress, 14 ff.,
24 ff. : see also Lambeth
CONPERENCES.
Philippine Islands, 31.
Presbyterians, 24 ff. ; in Aus
tralia, 27, 116; in Canada,
115 f. ; in China, 22 ; in
India, 22 ; in Japan, 22.
Presbyter, functions of, 71,
73ff., 88f.,93ff.
Prophet, 88 f., 135.
Eawlinson, A. E. J., 137 f.

Eeunion, Christian, 15ff.,24,
38 ff., 43 ff.
Eomanes, Mrs., 36.
Eome, Church of, 13, 32, 35 f.
Eoman Catholics, 24 f., 32.
Eose, H. J., 24 ff.
Salmon, G. (1819-1904), 74.
Scotland, Established Church
of, 6, 14, 119 ff. ; United
Free Church, 6, 14, 119 ff.
Shanghai : see Conferences.
Smyth, Newman, 39.
Sohm, Eudolf, 12, 55, 66 f.
South Africa, Church (or
Churches) in, 32.
Stackhouse, W. T., 23.
Stephen, Canon (now Dean)
28 f.
Succession : see Apostolic.
Talbot, Dr. E. S. (Bp. of Win
chester, formerly of South-
wark), 34 ff.
Talmud, 78 n.
Teacher, 89, 93f.
Terteillian, 79.
Turiler, C. H., 87-96 and
passim in Ch. III.
Two 'Ways, 133 f.
Undenominationalism, 34.
United Presbyterians (Scot
tish), 13 : see also Scot
land.
Universities, British, 44 f.
Validity, 105 ff.

142

Index

Wells, Dean of (Dr. Armitage
Eobinson), 132 ff.
Welsh Church, Disestablish
ment of, 122-5.
Wesleyans, 24 ff.
Westcott, Dr. B. F. (1825-
1901), Bp. of Durham, 16.

Williamson, Wallace, 122.
Wordsworth, Dr. J. (1843-
1911), Bp. of Salisbury, 11.
York, Archbp. of (Dr. C. G.
Lang), 32.
Young, J., 121.

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