THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA.*
IT is not too much to say that Dr. Hort has not left behind him a more important er—to the layman—a more interesting work than this. Had it been possible to adhere to the original scheme of the book, it would have been of a still greater value. Dr. Hort chose the title " Ecclesia" expressly "for its freedom from the distracting associations which have gathered round its more familiar synonyms," and his original scheme included an investigation into the evidence of the early Christian centuries. The present work is, therefore, incomplete in one sense. But as Mr. Murray, who edits this volume with truly loving care, says, "It is no mere fragment. The lectures as they stand practically exhaust the evidence of the New Testament, at least as far as the Early History of Christian Institutions is concerned. And Dr. Hort's conclusions on the vexed questions with regard to the Origins' of the different Orders in the Christian Ministry will no doubt be scanned with peculiar interest. It is, however, by no means too much to say that it was the other side of his subject, 'the Early Conceptions of the Ecclesia,' that gave it its chief attraction for Dr. Hort. And on this side unfortunately the limits of lecturing compelled him to leave many things unsaid to which he attached the greatest importance." As a matter of fact, the very idea of this work, as explained in its first pages, testifies to Dr. Hort's orginality. One of the most modest of men, he yet says :—" I am sorry to be unable to recommend any books as sufficiently coinciding with our subject generally. Multitudes a books in all civilised languages bear directly or indirectly upon parts of it ; but I doubt whether it would be of any real use to attempt a selection." The reasons which Dr. Hort gives for using the word " ecclesia " are quite conclusive. "Church" is its nearest English equivalent, but then it now carries with it associations derived from the institutions and doctrines of later times. " Congregation " is another equivalent for "ecclesia," and was the only rendering of it in the English New Testament as it stood throughout Henry VIII.'s reign, " the substitution of ' Church' being due to the Genevan revisers. But 'con- gregation ' has disturbing associations of its own which render it unsuitable for our special purpose; and, moreover, its use in what might seem a rivalry to so venerable, and rightly venerable, a word as ' church' would be only a hindrance in the way of recovering for church' the full breadth of its meaning. ' Ecclesia' is the only perfectly colourless word within our reach, carrying us back to the beginnings of Christian history, and enabling us in some degree to get behind words and names to the simple facts which they originally denoted."
Raving cleared the ground in this fashion by the
• The Christian Fectesio : a Course of Lectures on the Early History and Early Conceptions of the E.clesio, and Four Sermons. By Fenton John Anthony Hort, L.D. London : Macmillan and Co.
substitution of one unambiguous word for other words the meaning of which is vague, and might even be confusing, Dr. Hort proceeds in a series of lectures, and in the most masterly fashion, to trace the growth both of the idea and of the spiritual organisation involved in the word "ecclesia." There are but two allusions to the Ecclesia in the Gospels.
There is only one saying in which our Lord names the new or Christian Ecclesia. But this "marks at once its continuity with the Ecclesia of Israel and its newness as His own, the Messiah's, Ecclesia." When Dr. Hort has to deal with the fact that our Lord spoke not only of building his Ecclesia, but of building it " upon this rock," Dr. Hort reasons in this simple, yet powerful fashion :—
" It is impossible now to do more than say in the fewest words that I believe the most obvious interpretation of this famous phrase is the true one. St. Peter himself, yet not exclusively St. Peter, but the other disciples, of whom he was then the spokes- man and interpreter, and should hereafter be the leader, was the rock which Christ had here in view. It was no question here of an authority given to St. Peter ; some other image than that of the ground under a foundation must have been chosen if that had been meant. Still less was it a question of an authority which should be transmitted by St. Peter to others. The whole was a matter of personal or individual qualifications, and personal or individual work. The outburst of keenly perceptive faith had now at last shown St. Peter, carrying with him the rest, to have the prhne qualification for the task which his Lord contemplated for him. That task was fulfilled, fulfilled at once and for ever so far as its first and decisive stage was concerned, in the time described in the earliest chapters of the Acts. The combination of intimate personal acquaintance with the Lord, first during His Ministry and then after His Resurrection, with such a faith as was revealed that day in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a faith which could penetrate into the heavenly truth concerning the Lord that lay beneath the surface of His words and works, these were the qualifications for becoming the foundations of the future Ecclesia. In virtue of this personal faith vivifying their discipleship, the Apostles became themselves the first little Ecclesia, constituting a living rock upon a far larger and ever- enlarging Ecclesia should very shortly be built slowly up, living stone by living stone, as each new faithful convert was added to the society."
After the Ascension, as Dr. Hort shows, the condition of entrance into the Ecclesia—personal faith leading to personal discipleship—remains the same as before that "divine event."
At first the oneness of the Ecclesia is easily maintained as it is limited to the city of Jerusalem. But growing like the Roman Republic, it enlarges till it includes the entire Holy Land, and becomes conterminous with the Jewish Ecclesia. Next there springs up a new but not hostile Ecclesia at Antioch, which devotes itself largely to missionary enterprise, and sends out Paul and Barnabas, first to the Jews of the Dispersion and then to the Gentiles. On their way home they either recognise or constitute Ecclesia of their converts in the several cities and choose elders. The result is, of course, a multiplication of single Ecclesiie. Dr. Hort does ample justice to St. Paul's sedulous exertions to counteract the danger of a schism between the Ecclesiw of Judaea and those of the Gentile world. " When the danger of that schism has been averted he is able to feel that the Ecclesia is indeed One." Finally in Ephesians and Colossians-
" He does from his Roman habitation not only set forth emphatically the unity of the whole body, but expatiate in mystic language on its spiritual relation to its unseen Head, catching up and carrying on the language of prophets about the ancient Israel as the bride of Jehovah, and suggests that this one Ecclesia, now sealed as one by the creating of the two peoples into one, is God's primary agent in his ever-expanding counsels towards mankind."
St. Paul, indeed, as the theologian and ecclesiastical organiser of the early Christian Church—although Dr. Hort does not look very favourably on the word "organisation "—naturally occupies a great place in this book. Several of the more im- portant chapters, such as " The Ecclesia in the Epistles," " The
One Universal Ecclesia in the Epistles of the First Roman Captivity," "Titus and Timothy in the Pastoral Epistles," and "Officers of the Ecclesia in the Pastoral Epistles," are devoted to an exposition of the Pauline views. Than such exposition nothing could well be more lucid or ingenious,— where any necessity for ingenuity arises. Take, for example, what is said on the rather mysterious twelve verses in Ephesians in which the relations between husband and wife are dwelt upon :-
" St. Paul's primary object in these twelve verses is to expound marriage, not to expound the Ecclesia ; but it is no less plain from his manner of writing that the thought of the Ecclesia in its various higher relations was filling his mind at the time and making him rejoice to have this opportunity of pouring out something of the truth which seemed to have revelled itself to him. If we are to interpret mystery' in the difficult thirty-second verse, as apparently we ought to do. by St. Paul's usage. i.e., take it as a Divine age—long secret, now at last. disclosed, he wished to say that the meaning- of that primary institution of human society, though proclaimed in dark words at the beginning of history, could net be truly known till its heavenly archetype was revealed, even the relation of Christ and the Ecclesia, which just before has been once more called His body, and individual Christians members of that body. 'Pairini this passage in connection with the various references to the Eeelesia which have preceded it in the Epistle, it may be regarded as morally certain that the Ecelesia here intended is not a local community, but the community of Christians as a whole."
This volume, in addition to Dr. Hort's prelections as Lady Margaret's Professor, contains four sermons on sub- jects cognate to the Ecclesia,—" At the Ordination of Priests and Deacons," "At a University Commemoration of Benefactors," "In Emmanuel College Chapel," and "At the Consecration of Bishop Westcott." A special interest attaches to the last as being the final utterence of its author. Mr. Mnrray says truly that "it is the expression in a concentrated form of the thought of a lifetime on the vital conditions of Church life in special relation to the pressing needs of to-day." Dr. Hort emphasises what he terms " the chaotic condition which is spreading deeply under the surface of society," and while admitting the value of "the Press, the pulpit, the lecture-room, the school, and the home," as giving "opportunities for wholesome and temperate guidance," he contends that "the most obvious need of all is the need of a conscious and joyful sense of membership as taught by St. Paul." The sermon on University benefactors is a dignified exposition of the social and national functions of a great place of learning at the present time. No better example of the grave eloquence of which Dr. Hort was a master could be found than this sermon, which contains such an almost Miltonic passage as this :— "If it is a pernicious error to treat liberal knowledge as a luxury for the citizen. st ill lees, at whatever cost of seeming to magnify our office in delusive conceit, dare we speak or act as though a metropolis of liberal knowledge were a luxury for the nation. In some states of society the ethical and properly spiritual forces may suffice to resist dissolution ; but with the spread of loose and unsifted promiscuous knowledge they cannot long hold their ground alone on the large scale. It would be difficult to over-estimate the auxiliary remedial virtue of calm and mature knowledge vivified by careful and independent thought, except when it is unnaturally divorced from a high ethical standard. In the University, as its natural home, such salutary knowledge should grow freely and abundantly, not maintaining a difficult existence among surrounding hindrances, as when it springs up sporadically elsewhere, but fostered and nourished by the dominant influences of the place."
Altogether Dr. Hort could not have bequeathed to posterity a legacy worthier of himself than this most dignified and lucid text-book of early Christian Society.
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