First, what the Christian Church is. The Christian Church is an organization, a body, separate, different from all other organizations or bodies. It has a separate origin, a separate purpose. It has separate principles and law. As to its origin--the Church is divine. It is not a human institution. It is not a mere voluntary association, such as an Odd Fellows' Society, a Masonic Fraternity, a Mutual Improvement Club, an Insurance Company. None of these have in them any higher wisdom, authority, or goodness than human experience or contrivance has given them. It is different with the Church. God made the first Churches, and through them He made all other Churches. What the Church teaches in her creed is not from man, but from God. His revelation, the sacraments she administers, are divine institutions, God-appointed, and all the terms and the spiritual process by which people come to be part and parcel of the Church are directly from God. Men can no more make a Church than they can make a world. It is altogether a thing of God. Though human agencies are employed in its perpetuation, it is altogether of God.
This, it may be well to emphasize, is a point which does not enter into the practical consideration of men as it should. People come to church or stay away the same as they would go or stay away from a lecture on human science, politics, or travels. They forget that in the one case they are dealing with men and the things of men, in the other with God and the things of God. They listen to the preaching of the Word as they would listen to a candidate for political favor, except with a little more drowsiness and indifference. They forget that it is but man speaking in the one case, and that it is God, though by a man, speaking to them in the other. People all gaze more idly upon a baptism or an administration of the Lord's Supper than upon the shams and mockeries of a stage play, not reflecting that the one is mere empty buffoonery, whilst the other is a transaction upon which angels are gazing with reverence, and in which God is setting forth the precious riches of His almighty grace. They are great on praising their unions, clubs, lodges, fellowships, regarding them as the very connections for true fellowship, benefit, and improvement, and setting aside that organization without which the good that is in those connections would never have been. The little light with which those societies shine is only a borrowed light, reflecting feebly the spirit and principles of the Church which they largely despise. Beloved, these are no hasty utterances on my part. They are the words of deliberation and truth. There is a laxative goodishness, a weak religiousness spreading in our Churches that holds other organizations just as good as God's organization.