STRONGHOLD OF TRUTH
25
place to place, and afterwards died, it was essential to embody in another form the spoken revelation; and thus came the written form. We see at once that it does not very much matter whether it is spoken or written, so long as we can be sure it is a revelation from God. I am per fectly certain that if the Apostle Paul were here, we should listen to him just as carefully as we should read one of his writings. The precise way in which the revela tion comes does not matter so long as we can be certain that it comes from God. So that it is perfectly true that the written \Vord of the New Testament came after the Church, but the spoken vVord came before the Church. A Spoken Gospel By way of illustration let us remember that there was a Church in Uganda before Mackay and Pilkington put the Gospel into writing. The missionaries preached the vVord; it was accepted by some; and a Church existed before anything could be put into writing. And so there was a Church on the day of Pentecost from the Word spoken by the Apostles, long before there was a written \Vord. This is where the fallacy comes in. The Church, therefore, is "a witness and a keeper," but not a maker of Holy Scripture. One of·the hymns we sing is: "The church from her dear :Master, received the gift divine." Did the Church at Rome write the Epistle to the Romans? \Vas the Church at Rome the maker of that Epistle? Did the Church of the Ephesians make the Epistle to the Ephesians? No; it was the Apostle who wrote that Epistle to the Church of Rome, and it was Scripture to that Church from the moment they accepted it from his hand. John the Apostle says: "I wrote unto the Church, but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre eminence, receiveth us not." It was not the Church, but the Apostles representing Christ, who gave first the spoken and then the written Word of God. And so those familiar words in the Article of the Church of England, "The Church is a witness and a keeper," are literally true. The Church is a witness of what is Scripture. The Church has kept the Scripture.
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker