What is ecclesiasticism?

Now it is this last, the Spirit, that "ecclesiasticism" robs Christian men of, as to their enjoyment of it in their own souls. Thence (the Spirit ignored) the return again to the regions of darkness and to the gates of death is both easy and rapid, and is or will be the experience of the soul while under the influence of "ecclesiasticism."

A word as to what "ecclesiasticism" is. It is that which has shaken hands with the world, and yet assumes to be a collective light here for God, and it is that which does not hear the Spirit's voice. Its history we have in Rev. 2 and 3. It is an "ism," tacked on to the ekklesia of God - a parasite - a vampire which surely draws away all the vitality of that on which it feeds. To destroy life is its object, and to keep only the dead form bereft of it. (2 Tim. 3:15.) Not that it triumphs in this, but this is its object. We see how far we have got on the road to it in the address to Sardis: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." It is even that "ecclesiasticism" has found a home on earth (" where Christ found none"), from the address to Pergamos.

There have ever been certain recognised channels through which, in men's judgement, divine power and blessing ought to flow. But it is most certain that the blessing of God has reached multitudes of souls apart from official channels altogether. Like Gideon's fleece, ecclesiasticism has been dry while the refreshing dew of God's Spirit has been experienced all around (Judges 6:40) This, instead of producing heart-searching in those thus divinely passed by, has only too often evoked rancour and blasphemy. It is a settled principle with ecclesiasticism that everything outside of itself is unauthorised and abominable.

Now ecclesiasticism, — that is to to say, a clerical system, — always does interfere with this. The church gets to have an authority which limits the authority of the Word. No doubt it assumes to be derived from this, and in this way to uphold it; but this only makes it more ensnaring, where yet, as so constantly is the case, the Word is in fact set aside by the new court of appeal, — more plainly makes it the work of the enemy to dishonor Christ and injure His people. And few realize the extent of the injury which may be done, where apparently the matter itself is of very little importance. But look at the apostle's own "exercise" to "have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men;" consider his anxiety that even the faith of one should not be made a cause of stumbling to another, by leading him where he could not be in faith himself, and judge how important in his eyes the maintenance of conscience was. The matter about which it was exercised might be wholly indifferent; that did not affect the gravity of the result where it was violated: "through thy knowledge shall thy weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?"

We must look beyond the actors in the various divisions among the Lord's people, for there was a state of things that necessitated the divisions. Wherever you find an unspiritual, unexercised mass that can be wheeled into line at the bidding of some trusted man or men, with at best, only slight knowledge of both the facts and the Scriptural principles connected with the problem, you have the state of things that is at the bottom of the trouble. It is clerisy and ecclesiasticism (devotion to a certain man-made church order). These two things are the complement of one another and they exist among even those who have a horror of them elsewhere, while they don't realize that they are cherishing the very things that have produced them!

Even for those most widely removed (as it might seem) from all this, the same influences are at work, and should be no less dreaded. Ecclesiasticism, clerisy, the substitution of corporate for individual conscience, — these are all elements of a return-movement, the ebb of the tide which once seemed as if it could not so soon fail. But they are elements also of that Judaism with which man's mind, if it slip away from God, so readily assimilates. In fact it is all that is natural to man, and of himself he never gets beyond it.

Out of this happy, simple idea ecclesiasticism has alas reared its head. Bishops in Bible days were elder brethren with spiritual and moral qualities that fitted them to take oversight of the assembly, and to shepherd the flock of God. They were elder brethren among their brethren.

No wonder when Christians insist on the one body, and forget the one Spirit, the whole thing becomes in their hands a dead ecclesiasticism. It is a most withering thing, and has wrought untold mischief in the church of God. With the greatest assumption of being the only custodians of the truth, and affecting to despise all other Christians, such will shrink in their narrow-mindedness the one body down to the limit of their own little fragment. Professing loudly to be the only Christians on earth to be maintaining the truth of the one body, they attribute to their own little circle that which is true of all Christians, and become the most sectarian of the sectarian.

It is no wonder that here we find, along with those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, those now who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans in like manner. The two work well together. Nicolaitanism is, as we see now, a "doctrine." That which is spoken of as "deeds" in Ephesus is now crystalized into a doctrine to be accepted and defended. The people sunk in worldliness have become merely secular, and unfit for spiritual things. They naturally commit them, therefore, to those who are set apart to such things, who have time to devote themselves to them, and a training which they need, to find their way amid all the complexities that are necessarily arising. The Church must have its creeds, its canons, and its councils. The word of God can no more be trusted to settle things, where, on the contrary, so much is needed to be unsettled. Scripture would change the whole condition; but this only sets aside Scripture as unsuited to the times; and the wayfarer must not be a fool, but skilled in much traditional learning, if he would not err. The Jewish character of all this is evident. The work of the synagogue of Satan has wrought disaster enough. Scripture, with its direct simplicity of utterance, its word for individual consciences, its imperative claim of authority, if it cannot be permitted any more to judge, must be judged, or at least must practically drop very much out of thought; and this, we well know, was more and more the case. Souls everywhere in comparative distance from God, even those of the truest, were groping thus largely in the darkness. The spiritual were the clergy, or the spiritual life might be permitted to be realized in those who would bury themselves in the convent or hide in the desert. The Church, instead of the Spirit, was becoming the interpreter of Scripture; the Church determined doctrine for the mass, who, while in the mass they belonged to it, individually had scarcely place at all.

Now this guard is by the maintenance of the truth (as we have seen in the place referred to) that there are "two gates," "two ways," and correspondingly two ends: Christ the gate and the way to life eternal, — no other way than Christ; but then, alas! a wide gate and a broad way trodden by the many, and by which there will as surely be reached another end than this. Such is the guard which God has appointed to His sanctuary, the holy conditions which the grace of the gospel affirms, not sets aside. But Philistinism, that is, ecclesiasticism, does set them aside. It has a gate and a way which are not Christ, but which assume His name; which are broader than the true, yet narrower; and by which they penetrate between God's "tabernacle," which they claim for themselves, and the guard which He has set about it. Sacraments are made to give the "life," which He alone can give, and to sustain it. People are born of God by "water," the "Spirit" being taken for granted, and made subject to the will of man — the officiating priest. Bread and wine by an equal magic become in his hands the very flesh and blood of Christ. Here, in this Babel of unrealities which pass for realities, where the depth of the mystery is only measured by its irrationality, where faith in a sensual superstition becomes a debasing credulity, — here is indeed the entrenched camp of Philistinism, between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim, the "boundary of blood:" for so thorough is the opposition between the grace of Christ and this legal ritualism that to cross the border-line is a question of life or death: "in her," as the divine record is of Babylon, "was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." (Rev. 18:24.)

Such language of holy confidence is proper to the children of God concerning every blessing; though, alas, it is not always heard. A fearful trembling faith, sure of nothing, is as characteristic of the twentieth century as a bold unquestioning faith was characteristic of the first. To such a condition of mind have nineteen centuries of ecclesiasticism reduced even the best of God's saints.