Lectures on the Second Century.

LECTURE I.

THE DIFFERENT CHURCHES IN THE SECOND CENTURY: JUDEA,

SAMARIA, SYRIA

PAGE

163

THE FAILURES OF THE CHURCH IN THE BATTLE WITH THE GODS. 313

LECTURE I.

THE JEWISH CALLING.

Ecclesia.

I AM going to give you lectures upon Ecclesiastical LECT. I. History. I would rather say 'Church' History than Church and Ecclesiastical, because the word is a shorter one; but [The ordiI am not sure about the origin of the word Church, nary deri and I could not explain it as well from the Bible. Church from The word Ecclesia is a New Testament word. Its Kúpos is derivation is obvious. The whole history, both of the disputed.] Old and New Testament, is a commentary upon it.

An

As the New Testament is written in Greek, we, of Classical meaning of course, wish to know what the Greeks generally meant Ecclesia. by this word. The question is easily answered. Ecclesia was an assembly called together by a herald. But when you are interpreting New Testament words, you must not think only or chiefly of Greek usages. You must remember that the New Testament writers were Jews. Even when they used classical words, they used them in a Jewish sense. It often happens Etymologi that their Jewish feeling led them to give a Greek word a meaning more exactly answering to its etymology than the ordinary one did. So it is in this instance. Ecclesia, if you strictly adhered to the verb and the preposition from which it comes, would suggest

B

cal meaning

more im

portant for

the New

Testament.

LECT. I. the thought of calling out, rather than of calling together. Well, and that thought explains, I believe, the use of the word by the Apostles in the New Testament, because it is one which possessed the Prophets in the Old Testament.

Character

istic of the Bible.

I hope you will never forget that the Bible is the history of God's acts to men, not

of men's thoughts He is acting and

The

first chapters of

about God. It begins from Him.
speaking in it throughout.
Genesis speak of His creating the order of the world,
and of His creating man in His own image; of His
breathing into a man the breath of life; of His giving
him a helpmeet; of His putting him under a law; of
His teaching him to give names to the creatures.
This itself is the history of a calling. God is calling
all creatures into distinct existence, and calling out
Man to rule them, and to be like Him.

The first man did not believe in this calling. He distrusted his Maker, and tried to be independent of Him; so he made himself dependent on his wife, and on the creatures he was to govern. But God's order, the Scripture teaches us, was not lost because men fell into disorder. That which He had established must remain, however many or however few knew Prominence His purpose or entered into it. The whole Bible after this is the history of a calling out. It is not, mind you, that God calls any men into a state different from that which He has made for men. He calls them

given to

God's cal

ling of men.

into that very state; and they show their rebellion and their fallen nature, by not liking that state, but preferring some other to it.