Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/713

Rh CHRISTIANITY 099 a sect (cupeo-is) of the Jews. They do not seem to have had any ecclesiastical organization distinctive enough to separate them from the Jews. Founding on these and other facts Vitringa has derived the whole of the Christian machinery of worship and discipline from the Jewish synagogue. But this is going too far. Two influences, so far as we can gather, seem to have combined to modify the early state of matters which we see existing in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, and these were the hatred of the Jews and the entrance of Gentile Christians. These two circumstances led to the introduction of a new church organization distinct from the Jewish and more suited to the requirements of Christianity. This early Christian organization, whose growth can be obscurely traced in the New Testament, is characterized by two special features. It was evidently founded on and in many respects analogous to the Jewish religious community, and the constitution was thoroughly democratic. When Christianity arose, Palestine, and indeed the whole of the civilized world where Jews had penetrated and settled, was covered with a network of synagogues in con stant correspondence with each other. The synagogue system was an organization for public worship, but also had to do with the lives and conduct of the worshippers, and possessed quasi-judicial functions. The worship of the synagogue was not sacrificial, like that of the temple. It was simply devotional, consisting in prayer, praise, reading, and preaching, and was regulated by a fixed liturgy. The synagogues were ruled by a variety of office-bearers. In the first place, there was commonly a college of elders, with the chief of the synagogue at their head. These elders had a variety of names almost all of the designations given in the New Testament to the Christian office-bearers are used to denote these Jewish Z Kenim. These elders were the real rulers ; they had the power of excommunication, and superintended the worship and charities of the syna gogue. Besides these elders there was an officiating minister who was the delegate of the congregation ; the rules which Paul laid down to be observed n the choice of a bishop almost exactly correspond to the conditions to &quot;be satisfied in the election of the Sheliaeh. The lowest class of office-bearers were the ordained servants or ministers of the synagogue, who are sometimes called the young men, and who like the Sheliaeh and the Z Kenim were ordained by laying on of hands. In this synagogue system, with its simple devotional worship, its office-bearers to preserve discipline and encourage the exercise of charity, the early Christians found an organization ready to hand which they could at once take advantage of and either adopt or at least copy in important details. Christian All throughout the New Testament we are reminded office- that the office-bearers exist for the community and not the bearers. community for the office-bearers, and this truth is enforced with emphasis when the diversity of office in the Christian church is made to depend upon diversity of gifts (Eph. iv. 4-16), and upon the appreciation of those gifts by the Christian community testified to in the process of election. We get these two primary ideas therefore about the early Christian community, that possession of office meant the possession of gifts suitable for the edification of the community, and the recognition of this fact by the people. In the New Testament the ordinary office-bearers in the Christian communuity have a variety of designations. They are called Trpoicrra/xeVot, Trpeo-fivTepoi, ITTLO-KOTTOL TToifteves, and fiyovpevoi ; but all these names are usec evidently to express the same kind of officers, for they are continually used interchangeably the one for the other. In the earlier times of Christianity the service was probably very simple, and the meetings were held in the houses o: the first converts or of the officers of the little Christian community. In an old liturgy we find a rubric enjoining ,he deacons to order all mothers to take up their infants at a peculiarly solemn part of the worship, which hows us a picture of an early Christian assembly with he babies crawling peacefully over the floor during the greater part of the service. Many controversies have arisen about the relation of and to the apostles on the other. As the New Testament writings do not give us more than passing allusions to the mode in which the government of the Christian community was carried on, and describe it in action rather than give a detailed account of the principles on which it was founded and the way to apply them in practice, we may be expected to find there descriptions of the Christian organization at various stages of early development. Some have believed, not without great probability, that we have in the account of the choice and consecration of the seven men (Acts vi. 1-6) the beginning of the Christian organization on a distinct and separate basis of its own, and that these seven men were the first regularly chosen office-bearers in the early Christian community. These seven men were chosen to take charge of the charities of the small Christian com munity, and it is not difficult to see now from this how they came to rule the community. We find no trace of a distinct and separate election of elders or pastors ; and it is worthy of note that the special service to which these men were appointed, viz., to take charge of the poor, is the work which we find the elders engaged in on the first occasion on which they are mentioned (Acts xi. 29-30). Habitual almsgiving was regarded as a religious service of no ordinary significance, and was specially enjoined on all true believers, and the men appointed to take charge of this must have held a very high position in the church. It is evident, besides, that the superintendence of the charities involved a certain amount of disciplinary control, and so the other duties of the office-bearers in the Christian church, naturally clustered around this one. The recipients of charity were to be suitable persons (1 Thess. v. 12-15, 1 Tim. v. 9--16) ; and we can easily see how gradually the benevolent oversight passed over into the rule of discipline, until men originally elected to regulate the benevolence of the community became the rulers of the church. But whatever the earliest office-bearers were, and however they were chosen, it seems evident that their special function was to rule or to exercise discipline rather than to teach. In the apostolic church there seem to have been two kinds of teaching recognized, the apostolic announcement of the evangel and the preaching of the word. The latter was evidently at first open to all and sundry who had or who thought that they had the gift, and the only restriction placed upon indiscriminate exhortation was the command forbidding women to speak in public. The gift of preaching or exhortation was looked upon as a gift of the Spirit independent of office ; and the earliest office-bearers were men who ruled rather than men who taught. Open preaching continued for a long time in the post-apostolic church, and is distinctly recognized in the so-called Apos tolic Constitutions ; but there are evidences in the New Testament that the practice had its inconveniences and was discouraged by the apostles. James warns heedless preachers that they take great responsibility upon them, and shall receive the greater condemnation (Jas. iii. 1), and Paul in several passages takes notice of the irregularities and unedifying confusion attending the practice. Hence we find the function of instruction at an early period engrafted on that of rule, just as the function of rule had grown out of that of oversight of the distribu tion of charity ; and one of the special qualifications of elders of the church was aptness to teach. In the
 * hese office-bearers to the community on the one hand,