Mark 4:30-31

MARKS OF THE CHURCH

‘Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God?… It is like a grain of mustard seed.’

Mark 4:30

What are the characteristics of the Church which would possess the future? What are the conditions under which alone the mustard seed, which has grown so high already, shall fill the world?

I. Proclaims the love of God.—The future can only belong to a Church which believes and preaches the forth-reaching, energising, and active love of God. To be out of the warmth of the love of God is to be in the darkness, and how great is that darkness no one painted more clearly than Jesus Christ Himself. After all, why did God make anything except in love? No Church will save the world, and especially those thousand millions who have not yet had a chance of making up their minds as to the truth of Christianity, except a Church that believes and proclaims and lives out the love of God to every child that He has made.

II. Preaches a free salvation.—With the Gospel of the Love of God must go the message of a free salvation. It may be that in the past we may have allowed a legalising spirit to creep over the Church and therefore lost such great communities as the Wesleyans, because they thought the old bottles would not hold the new wine. But to-day, High Church and Low Church vie to preach a gospel of a free salvation, tidings so great that they dwarf into insignificance every dividing line that keeps them apart.

III. Possesses the historical ministry.—But it may be said: ‘Every orthodox Christian community in the world preaches the Gospel of the Love of God and of a free salvation’—in what sense are we justified to-day in the Anglican Communion in keeping our own organisation separate from the great non-episcopal bodies on the one hand, and the Roman Church on the other? We do not keep aloof from either in any spirit of unbrotherliness or pharasaical pride. We long to be one; we pray to be one; we honour and admire all that they have done for the cause of Christ. But in spite of this we are bound to maintain, in opposition to the great non-episcopal bodies, that the historical ministry cannot lightly be set aside in the Christian Church, that just as every plant has lines of its own on which it develops, so the Divine grain of mustard seed carries within itself the organisation by which it was meant to spread throughout the world. Again and again has this, as well as the Gospel of free salvation, been shown effective in the history of the Church. It was the ordered ministry and strong organisation of the Church which saved the Christian religion for Europe when the Goths burst upon Rome and swept it away; and it was the Church which, as a matter of fact, converted the conquerors. The Church of the future must undoubtedly possess the unbroken ministry and the historic Sacraments. ‘Hold fast that thou hast, that no man take thy crown.’

IV. Preserves the exact truth.—But I turn to the far more delicate question as to why we do not seek re-union under present conditions with that great historic Church which undoubtedly shares with us the gifts of an unbroken tradition and Sacraments consecrated by duly ordained ministers. To quote Bishop Edward King, of Lincoln, ‘the special function of the Anglican Communion is to preserve the exact truth. She much protests against any additions to, or subtractions from, the teaching of the Holy Scripture and the early and undivided Church.’ The Church of Rome appears to us to err in the use of authority in relation to the truth. The universal supremacy of a single see and the infallibility of an individual bishop are extreme instances of this. The ecclesiastical use of authority, in relation to individual conduct, seem to endanger the freedom of individual action. We wish people to say, ‘Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’ I believe it would be difficult to state in clearer words the difference between the ‘fatherly’ authority as given to the Church by the Anglican Communion and the authority as taught and practised in the Church of Rome.

V. Unworldliness.—It must clearly and unmistakably and before all the world be unworldly itself. The mustard seed is planted in the earth, but it will never grow and expand and flourish without the light and air of Heaven. The greatest danger of the Church is worldliness. Only a Church whose weapons still are faith and hope and love and prayer can hope to win the world.

Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Here are two objects: a very minute seed and a very large plant. The great golden lily of Japan comes from a bulb no larger than the apple. We may apply the parable to—

I. The religion of Christ.—Its beginning was very small. There were two disciples of John the Baptist, and one of the two brought another to Christ, and then Jesus finds Philip, and Philip finds Nathanael, and so the Kingdom grew.

II. Any Christian enterprise.—Sometimes a tiny seed grows to a forest. ‘There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon’ (Psalms 72:16). A handful of corn becomes a mighty harvest.

III. The Divine life in the soul.—‘How faint and feeble life may be! There is a child just taken out of the water—drowned. She is thought by all bystanders to be dead; they all say, “She is dead!” And as the eyes do not see, as the ears do not hear, as the heart’s beat cannot be felt, as the form is so still and ghastly, you might well suppose that life had flown. But, see! There is the faintest possible quiver of the lip—so faint that none have seen it but that anguish-stricken, quick-eyed mother! Precious sign; it means life! So there may be in your soul just a little quiver, just a faint pulsation of love to Christ, just a dawning interest in things Divine. Do not think little of it. Count it, rather, inestimable treasure. It is a germ of infinite potentiality; it is the minute seed of life eternal.’

—Rev. F. Harper.