Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/844

 church of England, which alone could consecrate a bishop, refused to do so for political reasons. In dire extremity and in danger of complete disruption the congregations resolved to help themselves. In the year 1784 they appointed delegations, laymen and clergymen, who assembled and constituted themselves the supreme unifying body and central organ of church government. A special historian of this epoch pictures it in these words: “Never had so strange a sight been seen before in Christendom as this necessity of various members knitting themselves together into one. In all other cases the unity of the common episcopate had held such limbs together; every member had visibly belonged to the community of which the present bishop was the head.” The imminent coherence of the communicants, which up to that time had centered in the organ—the bishop—which at the same time had become a reality outside of this organ, now came into view in its original character. The power was restored to that immediate reciprocity of the elements which had projected it from itself.

This case is especially interesting because the function of holding the church members together was conferred on the bishop by consecration, that is, it came from a superior source, apparently independent of that function. Now, however, it is restored by a purely sociological process and in this process the source of its energy is unequivocally revealed. That the local churches had the sagacity, after so protracted and so efficient determination of their sociological powers to an organ, to supply the place of this again by the immediate exercise of those powers was a symptom of extraordinary health in their religio-social life. Very many communities of the most various sorts have failed because the relation between their elementary social powers and the organs which they had produced was not constructive enough to refer the functions necessary for social self-preservation back to the elementary powers, in case the organs differentiated for those functions disappeared or became inefficient.

The elaboration of differentiated organs is, so to speak, a