St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-03-09
SOCIETY AND THE CHURCH.
Rev. S. G. Smith Asks if the For
mcr Can Do Without the Latter.

Rev. S. G.. Smith Asks if the For
,ncr Can Do Without the Latter.
Despite the heavy snowstorm yester-
day morning, the PEOPLES church held
a large congregation, which listened
closely TO one of Rev. S. G. Smiths
characteristic sermons His subject
was Society and the Church," the di-
vine taking for his text Eph. i, %: ''The
church which is his body" The SER
anon was as follows:
One may stand upon the hillside and
watch 4 locomotive drawing a train
through the valley below and take in its
strong outlines, recognize its capaciOuS
strength. and see in ii a force in ma
teral affairs, or he may stand close at
hand, look at its wheels and shafts,
study its internal mechanism and en-
deaYor to find out how it does its work.
80 one may study the church from the
vantage ground of some historical point
of view and see 1t coming down through
The centuries. recognizing in it the NEST
splendid agencies in making a ciyiliZa-
ton: or he may view il close at hand.
study its origin, consider its constitu-
tons and inquire what it really is in
itself.
Did Jesus Christ found the church,
This Is question which may be an
severed either i'll the affirmative or in
the negative, according to the content
which is given to the word church. If
hy the church we mean an ecclesiastl-
cal structure, complete in detail, with
officers who rule like princes, with sets
OF rules Which have the force of stat
uteS, with temples. rituals, music. col
legeS. literature and the machinery of
4 complex organization. such as is
known to the thought of modern times.
we must distinctly answer no. Such an
organization is foreign to all the re-
corded words and deeds of Jesus. The
church as an Institution has its begin
nlneS i'll the Acts of the Apostles, and
II is dimcult for us to master the record,
even II that record be conceded TO he
historically exact in all particulars. for
the reason that we are constantly
tempted to read into the first century Of
Christian history, what was practically
unknown until two or three hundred
years after
On the other hand there can be no
doubt that Jesus did form a society
which was the initial movement out of
which has been developed all the yari
Gus forms of church life known to his
tory. If. however, we seek to decide
just what He did in the premises. we
VIZ NC. perhaps, surprised 10 md how
little undeniable result is yielded. We
will soon discover that it was not essen
tally an institution of worship at which
lie aimed. He took the religious mate
rails of His Fathers, and so from adding
anything, He simplified all that He
found, He limited its claim, SO that
when He was through with His work IN
this direction. the brotherhood which
He had formed viewed as a religion
would hold some such comparison to
the stately ritual of the Jews as the
services of Quaker meeting house do
tothose of Roman Catholic cathedral.
This viii indicate how little He had to
do with of what the world before His
time had understood by the word reli
gion.
1t is comparatively easy to say in
what primitive Christianity did not con
sist. As it was not. technically. a re-
liglon, neither was it literature. for the
Master was one of whom His own gen
Grafton SAID, ''He never learned LET
terS. II was not music, though when
the cloud of His betrayal gathered over
Him lie went out with His disciples to
the Mount of Olives having sang
hymn. but that hymn was undoubtedly
one of the Hebrew psalms. 1t is curious
to think that the first generation of