The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1894-07-21 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE TRUE CHURCH.  WHERE SHALL WE FIND IT?  This was the subject of a sermon preached last Sunday evening by the Rev. J.J. Haley, to the congregation worshipping in the Claughton-road Music Hall under the name of the Church of Christ. The preacher first read the conversation between Peter and Jesus Christ as given in the xvi chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and then proceeded to declare his belief that Jesus used the term Church as equivalent to the Kingdom of God. He added that Jesus Christ's mission on earth waanot to establish achurch, to ordain an institution, nor to create an organisation, but simply to redeem mankind. It was a sheer impossibility and a ridiculous delusion to attempt to trace the church of to-day back to Jesus Christ, and identify the two. His contention was that any organisation on earth, no matter what it called itself or where it came from, that would not only persecute but also shamefully torture and murder human beings, for not receiving its opinions and its dogmas. forfeited all claim to be the church that JOSUI3 Christ estaldished. How, then, should man know the true church of Christ' It was a very simple matter. If a church of to-day comprised the elements of teaching and the characteristics which marked the church of Christ as described in the New Testament, then the two were identical. They could identify a church, but they could not trace it historically. Nor was there any need to do so. What was wanted was not succession but identification. Proceeding then to explain the meaning of the words of Jesus addressed to Peter, the preacher held that Jesus, being the builder could not be spoken of as the foundation of the Church, and Peter being the door-keeper, could not be the foundation. The foundation, in his opinion, was the truth of the Divinity of Christ, as just uttered by Peter. Following out the rhetorical figure, he described thematei ials necessary to build the spiritual Church as spirituality, catholicity or universality, unity, liberty, and equality. Speaking of liberty, he claimed liberty of thought, of interpretation, omiecienoe, and speech. He declared that as a Christian he was a free man with no ecclesiastical shackles. He could think and speak as he chose, no man daring to molest him or ' make him afraid. He repudiated the right of any I church to mper him in his just convictions or in [ the expression of his opinions, or in any way to circumscribe his liberty as a Christian. Some people would say it was imporible to have both unity and liberty together. There certainly could not he uniformity and liberty together, but there mild be unity and liberty. All Christians could be united in • common and loyal belief in-the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and Leyoad that they were at litcrty in all matters of philosophy, speculation, theory. and ?pinion, and no man could un-church or un-chriatianme them. Speaking of equality he declared that in the New Testament there was no such distinction as that between clergy and laity, or priests and people. All Christians were clergy. The ecclesiastical and sacerdotal conception which elevated one order of men above another was not Christianity. There should he equality and fraternity, for the Christian Church was a brotherhood of converted people. The preacher then went on to speak of the work of the apostle% declaring that they set themselves to convert individuals, and to make them not Methodist Christians, Baptist Christians, Catholic Christians, or Protestant Christians, but simply Christians. They were not only Christians, tut Christians only. When a number of Christians were made in a place the apostles gathered them together in an organisation called a church, and in time churches sprang up all over the place. Why could that not bc done now, and the apostolic Christianity in its simplicity, purity and holiness., restored to the church of Christ? He concluded bv appealing to Christians to work to. pull down all the barriers and partitions of sectarianism and be simply Christians and nothing else.  BRITIRH WOMEN'S TEMPERAIthE