History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

To resume the argument. The solidarity of the hierarchical system, whatever may be its efficient
uses, is radically opposed to that individuality which is the very genius of the gospel, not for personal
salvation only, but for true ecclesiastical assertion. Its essential quality is self-determination. It deals
with human nature on its highest plane. Its authority is from below upward and not from above
downward. To repeat a geometrical figure, the pyramid stands upon its base and not its apex, and
there can be no dispute that this is the order both of nature and of revelation. In no other way can a
system of government be kept in touch with the moral convictions of men. This truth has been well
expressed by a contemporary: "Civilized society is gradually being conformed by the leavening
influence of the principles contained in the gospel of Christ. Instead of depending on force and fear,
organized society is coming to recognize the voluntary principle as the power by which the
community is to be held together. 'A government of the people, by the people, and for the people,'
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is but another expression for the incarnation of the gospel of Christ in the social relations." Rev.
Dr. Buckley, editor of the New York Christian Advocate, and one of the brightest and shrewdest of
Methodist Episcopal officials, sees this truth, but as a conservator of old methods, as in duty bound,
grasps at a straw in a current number of that paper. Quoting a deliverance of Bishop Watterson of
the Roman Catholic Church, at a summer school held at Columbus, Ohio, recently: "All the
revolutions of this century have been caused by a wrong principle, which sought to make authority
come from below rather than from above," he italicizes, and says: "There is a great truth in this." But
only as be evidently mistakes the Bishop, who was not thinking of the theocratic side of government,
but of the Popish side. So viewed, who will dare affirm that there is a great truth in it in the sense
of commendation? Not even Dr. Buckley. He sees the dilemma in which his admission places him,
and, holding to the mistaken sense, adds: "A republican government can be harmonized with this
principle without difficulty, providing the people recognize their allegiance to God, and exercise
their votes conscientiously." That goes for the saying, but what he wishes to teach the Church
between the lines is, that there is an excuse for a system; that is, the Methodist Episcopal polity, in
which authority is from above downward, as in the Romish Church.
The essential differential quality of hierarchy and democracy is, that the former recognizes no
sovereignty but that of government, while the latter recognizes none but the sovereignty of the
people. The former is the basic principle of all monarchic, aristocratic, and autocratic, civil and
religious systems; the latter, the basic principle of the republic of manhood in both civil and religious
systems. And it is noteworthy that New Testament teaching, as embodied by Christ and the apostles,
while it recognizes in civil government "the powers that be" of whatever existent type; for religious
government it lays down the one law of love, Christ, as Head of the Church, being its only criterion
as declared in His fundamental, "One is your master, even Christ;" it as absolutely recognizes the
equality of brotherhood as underlying the sovereignty of the people in the counterpart of this
fundamental, "and all ye are brethren." It thus pronounces against the sovereignty of government as
its ecclesiastical ideal, inasmuch as His law of love is the law of the many and not of the few or of
the one. So while it declaratively enjoins as its ideal the sovereignty of the people, it also
implicatively forbids all civil systems not grounded on this sovereignty of the people, as incongruous
with His ecclesiastical ideal. Hence it is demonstrable that the autocratic system of Wesley, as a
striking illustration of the sovereignty of government, while it was allowable and had its justifying
uses in the formative stages of his religious "Societies," accepting him as their unquestioned ruler,
its entailment under the Deed of Declaration was forbidden by Christ's ecclesiastical ideal, the law
of love being in its necessary quality distributive of rights, and is utterly exclusive of any claim of