Church of Christ, as originally constituted, possess both a local and a catJiolic unity. " The first," to quote a great master now with the Lord, " was symbolised by each of the candlesticks regarded individually; the second by all the seven collectively. At Ephesus, for example, all the saints who dwelt in that city were gathered into visible communion with each other. All light was with them; everything else in Ephesus was darkness; and therefore one candlestick fitly represented their condition. There was one point of concentrated light. But what each Church was in its own locality, that all the Churches unitedly were to the world around them. They were together separated; had a common calling and service; were alike one to the other; were ordered and nourished by the same hand. This was catJiolic unity, symbolised by the seven candlesticks standing together with the Lord in their midst. The proper unity of the Church is gone if either of these be wanting."[1] How glorious was the Apostolic Church in its original purity and lustre! How brightly did it shine! And how rapidly did it disseminate its light! Thus the Apostle Paul, for instance, writing to the Thessalonians only such a very brief while after the Church in that city was founded by him, could say: " From you hath sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith to Godivard is gone forth, so that we need not to speak anything" (i Thess. i. 8).
But how long did this beautiful condition of things continue? Already in the lifetime of the Apostles, germs of corruption began to manifest themselves, and they have continued ever since to develop; and though the longsuffering of God manifested in His dealings with Christendom has been as great, and even greater, than in His dealings with Israel, He has had, nevertheless, to remove from His sanctuary, one by one, the candlesticks of Gentile Christi anity, and to disown them in their corporate capacity from being witnesses for the truth and representatives of Christ on the earth.
- ↑ Thoughts on the Apocalypse, B. W. Newton.
