West Port Experiment

Below is a sermon preached by Thomas Chalmers after the Disruption of 1843. Listen to the audio here; and a PDF of the sermon may be found below. Let confessional Presbyterians once again roll up their sleeves and build the walls of Zion!

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THE OUTWARD BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE OF GOD

Thomas Chalmers, D.D.

A sermon preached at the opening of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, holden at Glasgow, 17th October, 1843. Third edition. Glasgow: William Collins, South Frederick St., 1843.

Nehemiah xi. 16.

“And Shabbethai and Jozabad, of the chief of the Levites, had the oversight of the outward business of the house of God.”

The outward business of the house of God is of chief necessity and importance at the commencement of a Church, or at some of those great changes and enlargements which it is often made to undergo. At the outset of the Jewish Church, beside the regulations for the maintenance of the priesthood and distribution of the various offices, we read much of the time and labour expended on the structure of the tabernacle. The same thing might be observed on the occasion of great enlargements, or revivals, or deliverances—as at the rearing and successive great repairs of the temple in Jerusalem; and more noticeably still in the doings of Ezra and Nehemiah, on their return from their captivity, and the re-establishment both of their national and sacred polity. At the commencement, too, of the Christian Church, he who was the most gifted of its apostles—though pre-eminently a man of faith and prayer, and perhaps the most conversant among them in the vitalities of that high and hidden walk which constitutes the new obedience of the Gospel—still did he busy himself most of all with the matters of a mere external regulation, as journeys and collections, and the various questions of Church government and Church order. And descending from these primitive to later and uninspired times, where shall we find a more striking exemplification of the same union, than among the fathers of our own Church? We mean the devotedness of their piety as combined with the varied and profound wisdom of their economics. Had their conceptions all been realised, on the subject of schools and colleges, and a provision for the poor, as well as the various parts and offices of our great ecclesiastical institute, never, perhaps, was a more goodly apparatus devised, not for the Christian instruction alone, but for the moral, nay for the civil and secular well-being of the people in any land. Though these conceptions were not realised, though they were frustrated by the resistance of men in power, and by the unprincipled rapacity of the nobles in these days—this should not prevent us from doing homage to the conceptions themselves, as having been fraught with all the wisdom of experience, and of profoundest skill in the management, we could even say the philosophy of human affairs.

Let us, therefore, take a lesson from these great master spirits of a former age. Their spirituality did not so monopolise them, as to dispossess from their minds all value for the matters of external regulation, or cause them to under-rate as an object unworthy of their most earnest attention the outward business of the house of God. Bishop Butler has written a sermon, the least known of his works, on the use of externals in religion. But his topic is not exactly ours; for what he philosophises on is chiefly the influence of form, and ceremony, and music, and investiture, and such other visible accompaniments, on the devotional feelings of a worshipper. This is not just our subject, which relates more to the polity and plat or platform of a Church as distinguished from its doctrine, and from all that discipline which has to do with the moral and religious state of those who partake in its ordinances. The outward forms are not altogether the same with the outward business of the house of God.

Yet the inward should take precedency of the outward, both in the order of influence and in the order of time. And it was, we trust, the force of a strong inward sentiment which led to our recent memorable disruption from the now Enthralled, and the consequent formation of the Free Church of Scotland. It was an inward and a right spirit, we hope, which animated the devotions and the doings of its First General Assembly. It has, we are confidently persuaded, been an inward principle all along, which has borne up her ministers in the midst of their painful surrenders and arduous services; and which, most difficult of all, has hitherto maintained amongst them all the charities of a substantial harmony and peace; and that, too, when engaged with such hazardous and exciting topics, as on the arena of an earthly politics, would have stirred up all the passions of a fierce and heated partizanship. But the inward principle should not prevent, nay the very strength of it will prompt us onward to the outward business of the house of God. To these it falls, necessarily and naturally, that we should now address ourselves. It will form a main object in our present Assembly; and it is for this reason that I have selected our text, and propose to found upon it some remarks on the importance of such other things as are to come under the deliberative wisdom of my Fathers and Brethren, and on their subserviency to that spiritual religion, which, not as a main ingredient only, but in its very substance and being, forms the great staple or element in the vital prosperity of a Church.

First, then, there is nothing in the doctrine of a spiritual influence, or in the undoubted position that whatever is good or true in religion is the product of the Holy Spirit’s operation—there is nothing in all this which supersedes the importance or the uses of an external machinery, the setting up of which and the working of which belong to the outward business of the house of God. It is very true that no man is savingly enlightened in the doctrines of the Gospel, or strengthened and enabled for the performance of its duties, but by the demonstration and power of the Spirit upon his soul. Yet, as it is only through the Bible that He enlightens, opening our eyes to behold the wondrous things contained in this book; and as when He works in man to will and to do, and so to set him a-working, still it is by giving enforcement and effect to the lessons of this said Bible—there is positively nothing in the doctrine of a celestial agency which should at all set aside the terrestial operation of multiplying and disseminating by thousands of copies the Word of God, which can only be done by means of these very outward things, the construction of printing-presses. And what is true of the word read in private is alike true of the word spoken in public, that it only takes effect when the Spirit sends it home; but this requires that men should not forsake the assembling of themselves together, and so requires another preparation of outward things—even the erection of numerous churches all over the land. Our Saviour after his resurrection bade the apostles go to Jerusalem, and wait there till they should be endued with power from on high; or, in other words, there was a certain outward thing which they were told to do, ere the inward grace or inward illumination could be conferred upon them. The doctrine of a supernatural influence from heaven above did not supersede, nay, it required a given natural performance beforehand on the earth below, even that of bending their footsteps to the place which the Saviour’s precept pointed out, and where the Saviour’s promise was to be fulfilled upon them. And still there are not only certain prescribed performances, but certain appointed places of meeting between the Spirit of God and the spirit of men; and, to make out the co-operation which this implies, man has to work outwardly, and with the powers of his body, while God works inwardly on the functions and faculties of his soul. One of these places is the Bible, which it is our part duteously and diligently to read and give earnest heed unto—aye and until the day dawns and the day-star arises in our hearts, even by God opening our eyes to behold the wondrous things contained in His law. Another of these places is the church, where we are bidden assemble ourselves together, even as Cornelius was bidden hold a church in his house, that both he and his family might hear the words of Peter; and, as then, so now, it is while the minister is in the act of speaking that the Holy Ghost often falls on the earnest and attentive listener when in the act of hearing. We must not slight the natural performance, though of no value singly or apart, or without the supernatural endowment; and still less when the one is the prescribed road to the other—even as the apostles when on the road to Jerusalem were on the road to the high and heavenly illuminations of the day of Pentecost. And, yet, when doing these things, it is with outward things that we are engaged in the doing of; and, so also, when laying down the forms, and the processes, and the offices of a church, in obedience to the commandment of Him who says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” Had the apostles disobeyed, and not gone to Jerusalem, they would have waited in vain at any other than the bidden place for the illuminations of Pentecost. And should we neglect either our readings of the Bible, or our acts of attendance on the house of prayer, we have no reason to expect that in any other than such bidden ways will the Spirit of God descend upon our souls. And thus, too, it is, that should the guides and the rulers of our ecclesiastical polity fail in providing either a right scriptural education, or the services of a rightly ordered church for the people of the land—outward things as schools and churches are, and outward business as it is to build up a framework or construct a directory of public worship; yet if these things are not done, and done rightly, a spiritual barrenness might otherwise rest upon our territory, and our else fertile land, by the showers of grace being withheld from it, might, in the spiritual sense of the term, remain a dreary and desolate wilderness.

Let it not therefore be said of these views that they go to materialise religion. On the contrary it is our direct aim to spiritualise it—as much so as it was that of the Apostles when they performed the outward thing of going up to Jerusalem with the object of waiting there till they should be endued with power from on high—or as much so as the devout and desirous reader of his Bible, who, while engaged and persevering in this outward exercise, gives earnest heed thereunto, till the day dawn and the day-star arise in his heart. Did we stop short at the routine or mechanical observance of these things, this would be to materialise religion; but this we leave to wretched Puseyism when satisfied with the opus operatum, after having acquitted its repetitions on the service-book, or its genuflections before the illuminated altar. Our churches and sacraments are not the resting places of a deceitful security—but our watch-towers whence we look for a blessing from on high, our meeting-places with God whom it is our part to worship, not with idle prostrations or in an empty superstitious reverence for places and forms, but to worship Him in spirit and in truth. The irrigations of Egypt do not terminate in themselves. They have respect to the overflowing of the Nile; and without a descent from above, they would prove but an empty apparatus of dry and deserted channels through which nothing passed to fertilise the now barren territory. Yet who will deny the good of these irrigations, or the perfect rationality of the object which the cultivators of the soil there have in the construction of them? And the same holds true of our ecclesiastical apparatus, whether it be of church-buildings, or church forms, or church offices—of absolute nothingness in themselves, an unmeaning system of empty tubes or naked architecture, without the blessing from on high, without the descent of living water from the upper Sanctuary. But who on this account should dispute the worth, the rational, enlightened, nay spiritual purpose of such a machinery as this—or who should undervalue either the outward framework or outward business of the house of God? Only let us look beyond and above all that is visible or external; and with as intent and wistful an eye as that wherewith the people of Egypt gaze upon their tutelary river and watch its elevations—so let us never cease from our attitude of expectancy and dependence upon Him who is the Fountain of living waters, but ever pray to the Father of every good and perfect gift that He would breathe into the framework set up by human hands, and which but for Him were a lifeless skeleton, that He would cause its dry bones to live.

Let us trust therefore that we have now sufficiently reconciled even the most spiritual of our hearers to the outward business of the house of God, by making it palpable that means and machinery in religion, while utterly worthless as a substitute, may be of the uttermost worth and importance a help as to the life of God in the souls of men—deriving in fact their principal if not all their value from their subserviency to this high and noble end. Let me now conclude with one or two illustrations applicable to the present exigencies attendant on the outset, and eminently conducive to a prosperous settlement in these lands of the Free Church of Scotland.

First then, we shall instance the proposed restoration of the ancient and useful order of Deacons in our ecclesiastical polity. We do not enter in detail at present on the nature of their official duties, though even this might not be a topic at all times unsuitable for the pulpit—seeing that the Apostle Paul (or rather the heavenly Agent who inspired him) in one of his epistles to Timothy, where he treats of the qualifications of applicants, and lays down rules for the distribution of the Church’s alms, has deemed this very topic to be not unworthy of a place in the Bible. But we would rather dwell for a little on another and far higher benefit arising from the institution of a deaconship, and adverted to in Scripture when relating the first establishment of this economy in the Church. We are there told that the business, the proper and peculiar business of this order of men, fell at first into the hands of the Apostles; but that they wanted to be quit of it, and on this ground, that it was not reason for them to leave the word of God and to serve tables: And so seven honest men had to be chosen, on whom this service might be devolved, for the express purpose that the Apostles might give themselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Here you will at once perceive the direct subserviency of the outward to the spiritual—the use and the immediate effect of a merely external arrangement for the doing of an external work, in the enlargement of these two greatest and best of our spiritual ministrations, which are prayer and the preaching of the gospel. It relieved and disengaged the apostles, setting them free for the dedication of their entire strength and time to that work which is strictly apostolical. After a result so precious, let no man undervalue the worth and importance of outward things. Even the godliest of our ministers of Christ, they who have gained the loftiest ascents in the high and hidden walk of Christian experience, must no longer despise them—for so far, in this instance, from disturbing, or in aught diminishing that which was going on in the higher regions of the Church, these central and more sacred departments of the Church’s business, these upper spheres of ecclesiastical labour were all the more replenished and quickened thereby.

It were in exact analogy with this high and scriptural example, did we plead for the revival of our deaconship, that the ministers of religion might be disburdened of all those secularities which ought never to have been accumulated upon their persons; and that, freed from all anxiety about the things of this life, they might prosecute without distraction the duties of their sacred calling, and give themselves wholly to the business of winning souls. But this we barely and briefly state, and shall not, at present, enlarge upon. We now bear respect to another class of men altogether. It is well known that the cessation of deacons in our church, by the transference of their duties to office-bearers of a higher degree, has secularised the work of the eldership. And, let us no longer undervalue even the spiritual importance of outward things, seeing that the restoration of this ancient order, and the reassumption by them of their own proper and original duties, might emancipate the higher functionaries for their higher labours, so that elders shall become what they were in purer and better days—fellow-workers with their pastors in the cure of souls, and important helps in the ministry of the gospel.

Now, look to the existing state of matters in our church, and see whether in the reformation for which we plead, there be not a most precious, and, at the same time, the most seasonable of all adaptations to the present exigency of our affairs. The number of ministers who have quitted the old establishment is four hundred and seventy. The number, I understand, of available probationers is about one hundred and thirty, who, after they have received ordination, will swell the account of ministers to six hundred in all. But the number of congregations already formed, or in progress towards this, is at least eight hundred—and this, too, a number never falling back, but subject to constant, almost daily accessions, had we only the means of an adequate supply, or a sufficiency of labourers wherewith to meet the ever-growing demand for more full and frequent ministrations. Now, we do not want precipitately to enlarge the work of any of our office-bearers beyond their fitness, or even their inclination for the work. But would even so much only as one-tenth from among the several thousands of our elders so far conquer their diffidence as to come forward and help us in our present necessity—would they but venture on what very many of them are so well qualified to do, to conduct the public readings and devotions of our solemn assemblies—would they but thus keep together for a time our embryo congregations, fostering and carrying them forward till we had so far hastened the preparation of our students as to provide a commensurate supply of licentiates, and under the blessing of Him who is Lord of the harvest, to send forth enough of labourers in full equipment for the plenteous harvest of our vast and encreasing population—Then so urgent, so growing is the disposition everywhere to pass over from the State-fettered to the Free Church of Scotland, that with but the extraordinary help for a few years of some hundreds in the eldership, we might convert, what will otherwise be a limited and partial, into a great national movement; and might thus be enabled, when in full possession of all the towns and almost all the parishes, to get up a pure and efficient gospel ministry for the great bulk of the families in our land.

Yet let it not be forgotten, that, even in the days of the New Testament, an apostle, and he the most abundant of them all in his spiritual ministrations, did charge himself with the produce of those collections, which were made by the richer disciples in one place, and designed for the relief of the poorer in another. And, in like manner, there is a fund made up of weekly gatherings, the contributions of men who give as God hath prospered them, of which we shall say nothing more particularly now, than that, instead of being intended for the supply of the temporal wants of any, the far higher aim of its distribution will be the supply of the spiritual wants of all our brethren; and so as that the blessings of a gospel ministry shall overspread the whole of Scotland, even to the most remote and destitute places of its territory, chequered as it is with all the varieties of human fortune, from lordly affluence, or prosperous and princely merchandise in one quarter, to extreme and helpless poverty in another. Surely when the object is so sacred, as an equal and full provision of the bread of life for all, the having to do with such a department of the Church’s affairs is something more than having to do with the Church’s secularities. There is so much of religiousness in the principle on which the contributors of this fund are led to give for its support and extension, and so much of what is strictly religious in the application of it, that we confess our desire to see it in some way associated with the functions of our eldership; and be it in order to stimulate its collectors by urging upon them the mighty importance and solemn responsibilities of their office, or to quicken and sustain, nay elevate the liberalities of their respective districts, or finally to charge themselves with the custody and transmission of these sacred offerings—we feel as if there were a singular grace and good keeping and propriety in having the care and cognisance of an interest so precious committed to their hands. We would not, therefore, wholly dissever these high office-bearers, and next to the ministers of the gospel, from the management of the Church’s alms, more especially from those alms which are set apart for the sustentation of the gospel ordinances throughout the country at large. They should be men of prayer, but not, therefore, disjoined from the business of charity, and in particular of that charity the offerings of which are consecrated to the support of the great Home Mission which labours in every part of our land for the good of human souls. The prayers of faith in company with such offerings will, like those of Cornelius come up in memorial before God.

Ere I conclude, there is one general topic which I should like briefly to touch upon—relating to the machinery of our Church’s business, and for which we have a sanction and a model in the New Testament. It is not a lesson respecting the duties of any one office, but a lesson grounded on the undoubted fact, that in the primitive Church, even as moulded and fashioned by the hands of the Apostles themselves, there did obtain a great multiplicity of offices. Look at the construction of the Church in Corinth, with its goodly apparatus of offices and office-bearers—complex as the human body, to which, with its various members, it has fitly been compared; and where all moved in perfect harmony, because each confined itself to its own functions, free of all disturbing interference, or of any inroad on the province of the others. It is not alone the skilful distribution of parts that we are called upon to admire; but what I would have you especially to notice is the recognition given here of a great principle, and which is applied by inspired men to ecclesiastical, even as it is by uninspired men to all other business—even the principle and philosophy of the division of labour. In the matters of ecclesiastical government, all Scripture is full of it. We find it as far back as in Jethro’s advice to Moses. In the polity of the Old Testament Church, as exemplified in the very chapter from which our text is taken, the subdivision of employment seems to have been carried as far as possible. And also in the Church of the New Testament, its gifted Apostles, though largely and supernaturally endowed from on high, instead of taking all upon themselves, were glad to have the benefit of this principle. And accordingly what an array of distinct functions and distinct functionaries is set before us in the twelfth chapter of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. When we read there of a Church as made up of many helps, and diversities, and various members of a great and complex body politic, we cannot but be struck with the marvellous harmony which obtains between the harmony of grace and the harmony of Nature. On the one hand, we find that constitutionally and naturally there is an exceeding variety of talents and dispositions and particular aptitudes among men; and on the other hand, corresponding to this, we observe of the Spirit, that, in calling and qualifying men for their respective Church offices, He, instead of accumulating all his gifts upon one person, divided to every man severally as He will. There is here a lesson to ourselves—for this too, like all other Scripture, is written for our admonition on whom the latter ends of the world have come. And the lesson seems obviously to be this—that there ought to be a far larger and more subdivided agency for the public business of our Church. It is not law alone, it is not logic alone, it is not oratory alone—indispensable and most efficient though each of them be within their several spheres of usefulness—yet it is not these, either singly or altogether, which should bear universal rule in the midst of us. These may all exist, in marvellous power and perfection too, without much of what is familiarly termed the knowledge of business, without much discernment of human nature, without much either of intuitive skill or acquired experience in the management of human affairs. We should therefore invite a far larger number both of ministers and elders to come forth on the walks of public and official employment, and these should be put into a far better state of subdivision and in more skilful relationship to each other than heretofore. It is not by a few rapid generalisations, or schemes of committees, flung off at a single heat by the pen of a ready writer—it is not thus that our Church can be made either to start aright or to prosper on her way. What we have most to dread and to deprecate is a hasty universalism that would engross all. If, instead of aspiring and having to do with everything, each satisfied with his own peculiar excellence would labour to do one thing well—this were in far better accordance with the apostolic injunction of each man thinking soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man—this were in far better keeping with the limited faculties of our nature, with the real mediocrity of the human powers.

Let it not be imagined that it is with the ambition of the few that I now hold a reckoning—it is with the indolence of the many. It is not against those who do engage in the public service of the Church that I now speak—for this were affixing a stigma on some of our best and most patriotic men—but against those who do not step forward to that service, and whom we now call on to come over and help us—help those who overladen with work are ready to sink under the burden of their manifold employments. It is impossible that the business of the Church can be well done with so stinted an agency as ours; and therefore we invite not in fives or in tens but in fifties at least, so many ministers and as many elders, out of whom an adequate number, not of large but of small, and these really efficient and serviceable and well assorted committees might be formed—that each may have but his one committee, or at least but his one convenership to attend to, and that the business of our Church might proceed in a style worthy of its great cause, and worthy too of those great ancestors, the Fathers of the Scottish Reformation, who, not in the depth of their piety alone, but in the profoundness of their secular wisdom and skill in building up whether the right polity or right platform of a Church, were the most remarkable men of their day.

In conclusion, let us not forget the final outgoing of the Apostle upon this subject, when, after having assigned the distribution of the Church’s offices, according to the respective gifts of the occupiers, and whom he discharged from all encroachments on each other’s functions or provinces—then proceeds to show them a more excellent way, and breaks forth into a descant (one of the most eloquent passages in holy writ) on the powers and properties of that charity which harmonises all, which amalgamates all. Let all our things be done in that spirit of love which is there inculcated so beautifully—love to each other—love to those who are engaged with ourselves in this great battle for the spiritual liberties of Scotland—above all love to the souls of our people—nay love to our enemies in this sore struggle, who now watch for our halting, and have confidently predicted that we shall at length fall to pieces by falling out among ourselves. Let it be our determination and our care to disappoint these calculations. Let patience have its perfect work in our souls; and not by sternness or striving, but by the meekness of wisdom and at the bidding of high principle, let us triumph over every provocation whether on the part of friends or adversaries, that all our heart-burnings and all our wretched jealousies might vanish and give way before the omnipotence of Christian charity.

The principle which we have now brought to bear on the matters of public Christianity is prolific also of applications, manifold and innumerable, to the concerns of personal Christianity. What we have spoken of as essential to the prosperity of a church, is also essential to the prosperity of religion in the heart and habits of an individual. I cannot, at present, expatiate on this; but in one brief sentence let me try to urge it home upon my hearers—that they may learn to blend the outward with the inward, the deeds of the hand with the devotions and aspirations of the heart, so as to be ever rising from services to supplications, and from supplications to be again falling back upon services. Are they pressing onward to such a spiritual light as they have never realised, or to such heights of sanctification as they have never yet attained—let them try the combination which we now recommend, and see whether a blessing and an enlargement will not come out of it. When they read their bibles, let them pray with all earnestness for the Spirit—when they pray for the Spirit, let them read with all earnestness their bibles. Let their performances and their petitions go hand in hand—looking with as much dependence for grace and help from above as if God did all—labouring with as great diligence among the duties of life below as if man did all. O! may such be the spirit of our assembly, and of all its members, approving themselves as men of industry and wisdom, and yet as men of faith and of deepest piety.