Taking then our standpoint in this year of our Lord, 1883, we find that the Church of Christ has been extending for just 1850 years, and that throughout that time it has been spread by countless agents, and in countless manners, in every direction throughout the world. Starting as it did from Palestine, it has now taken root on every continent, and it has borne the sacred Name of our blessed Saviour into every quarter of the globe.
But while there has been this world-wide spread of Christianity, and while there is at this present time this widely-extended acknowledgment of the Name of the Lord Jesus, it is at the same time perfectly obvious that there are within the Church of the baptized immense diversities both of creed and practice. There are different Churches standing aloof from each other. There is the Church of Rome in conflict with what is called the Greek Church on the one hand, and with us Protestants on the other. What is commonly called the Greek Church consists again of many branches, or is rather an aggregate of many independent Churches not united under any one head. There is the original Greek Church, the Russian, the Syrian, the Coptic, and the Abyssinian. So in the Church of Rome there are various orders, besides the great division between the secular and regular clergy; while we all know, to our heartfelt sorrow, how those who are united in their love for the great Scriptural principles of Protestant truth are still divided into various denominations. Thus, looking at the Church of Christ as a whole, we find it spread into so many places that it encircles the world; and broken up into so many sections that it is hard to trace what we may term any visible corporate union. There is separation as to place, and divergence as to Church organisation.
But now we come to the wonderful and indisputable fact that, notwithstanding all this separation and all this divergence in all countries and many systems, wherever we find the name of Christ there we find His own two Sacraments; and wherever we meet with Christianity there we are sure to meet with Baptism and the Holy Communion, God’s two witnesses to His inspired truth.
This is sufficiently wonderful if you think merely of the geographical extension of the Church. The visible Church is spread amongst different nations, in different climates, and with different habits; some of which are leading the way in civilization and science, while some are sunk in barbarism; some leading the thoughts of the world, and some apparently never thinking at all; some absorbed in trade, and some so completely without trade that they have not even a currency. In some there are old churches that have existed for centuries, and in some churches of modern formation recently called into being through colonization and missions; and yet, though the two Sacraments are so perfectly simple that there is nothing in themselves to spread or perpetuate themselves, wherever you go you find them. Place and space have made no difference. Go to Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, it makes no difference; wherever you go there you find God’s two Sacraments essentially bound up with the Christianity of the people.