Is it not a fact that Christ is most truly revealed to us as in unity with the Father in his identification of himself with suffering and degraded humanity, as most truly Divine when he eats with publicans and sinners, pours out his strength [p.25] for the sick and suffering, and his life for those who have rejected him and at best have misunderstood him?
The Church, then, is most likely to attain to that inward unity for which her Founder prayed by following the guidance of his life. She will be most like him in laying upon herself and claiming as her own the sufferings and evils that befall or should befall, men in the world without; least like him and least likely to attain this Divine unity when she claims rights and privileges for herself, when she insists on her superiority, when she turns from her the publican and sinner, or leaves them to meet the punishment which is their due.
The union of Christians with each other is to be witness to the world of the Divine mission of Jesus. Men are to believe on him because they see how his life and spirit hold together communities with differing organisations and men of widely varying personality. The union is not to destroy personality or variety of character, but to underlie all difference. It is no external machinery to unite us in a single visible organisation by which individuality would be stamped out or fettered in growth. There is little trace of any such machinery in the earliest history of the Church, and the ages and places where it has been most perfect have not been those which we think of as nearest in spirit to Christ, nor those men most like Him whose lives have been spent merely in the development of such organisation. [p.26 ]
Perhaps the only one of the first group of disciples who possessed powers of organisation was Judas Iscariot; and some critics may say that he at least has had an apostolic succession of followers throughout the history of the Church. One remembers the terrible saying of Renan [2] <#_edn2>: L'histoire de l'Eglise sera le plus souvent désormais l'histoire des trahisons que subira l'idée de Jesus; and though no churches have been dedicated to SS. Ananias and Sapphira, they have become in practice the patrons of too many Christian lives. But if we cannot wish for an external unity such as that for which many good men plead, we have, nevertheless, constantly to strive after a deeper union of spirit in the service of our fellows, in the search after truth, in love to our Lord.