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fellowship for pedobaptists. Christian fellowship is always freely offered.

I have not deemed it necessary to justify this statement by quotations from Baptist authors. No Baptist will question the correctness of my representations, so far as they go; and in so far as they are defective, the gaps will be closed as the demands of the argument may suggest.

OBJECTIONS.

The doctrine thus outlined is weak in facts and in logic.

1. In logic. The advocates of close communion are unanimous in basing it upon the doctrine that the Lord's Supper is a church ordinance; that is, an ordinance of the local church. Baptism belongs to the beginning, and the Supper to the maintenance, of the Christian life. There are slight variations in the methods of statement, but none in the theory.

That the Lord's Supper is a church ordinance I admit. But Baptists are mistaken in supposing that this is the determining principle, the justification, of close communion, even to their own minds.

The church ordinance theory of the Supper would furnish a specious explanation (but not a true one; not a justification) of close communion on one hypothesis. If Baptists admitted to the ordinance none but members of the church observing it, the theory and the practice would be consistent. A church ordinance is naturally for members of the church, and no others. If close communion is based on the church. ordinance theory, as it purports to be, then it ought to correspond to it, and admit none but the members of the local church. If others are to be admitted, it will not be because the Supper is a church ordinance, but rather in spite of the fact, and because of some other, higher, and dominant principle that prevails against the local narrowness of the church ordinance theory. This theory does not touch upon any

inter-church or extra-church relation. If it must be regarded as either definitely permitting or definitely forbidding the welcoming of outsiders to the table, then it must be regarded as an absolute prohibition. The fact that the Supper is a church ordinance cannot possibly authorize the admission of persons not members of the church. But Baptists admit persons not members, namely, the members of sister Baptist churches; and the admission of this class of persons is universal, and characteristic of the denomination. Close communion exists, therefore, not because of, but in defiance of, the church ordinance theory.

Baptist writers all recognize the insufficiency of this theory of the Supper to justify close communion. Says Dr. Hovey,1 "As the eucharist is a church ordinance, they [Baptists] hold that none but members of the church observing it are strictly entitled to partake." But a little reflection must convince any one that, in abandoning the strict requirements of the church ordinance theory, Baptists have moved to other ground. They do not simply supplement that doctrine by some logical corollary or closely related principle. They adopt an entirely new and different principle, and one totally inconsistent with the other. The main theory asserts that only local church members may be received. The addendum freely admits outsiders. And the addendum, and that alone, controls the practice of the denomination. The church ordinance theory is not merely insufficient to justify close communion; it is irrelevant. It does not account for any part of the practice. Even the exclusion of pedobaptists is not explained by it, but by the new principle. That which admits fellow Baptists for reasons independent of and paramount to the church ordinance doctrine is, as a matter of fact, the same independent and paramount principle that excludes pedobaptists; insomuch that, if the church ordinance doctrine were dropped out of sight as a reason for close 1 Bib. Sac., 1862, p. 162.

communion, the reason actually assigned by Baptists for the practice would remain intact. The truth is, Baptists are mistaken in their own mental processes. They think they deduce close communion from the doctrine that the Lord's Supper is a church ordinance, and that they merely supplement that doctrine by other considerations to account for the admission of outsiders of the same faith and order; when in reality their minds, unconsciously perceiving the irrelevancy of the church ordinance theory, have passed it by and rested the whole case of close communion upon the supplementary considerations alone. A glance at the nature of this supplementary reasoning will show the truth of these remarks.

Baptists as a denomination have no formulated and authoritative statement on this point. There is, however, substantial agreement in the variously expressed views of individuals. "Courtesy," "consistency," and "loyalty to principle," are samples of expressions by which Baptist writers voice the conviction that identity of church usages justifies, and a lack of it forbids, inter-communion at the Lord's table. 1 This statement, considered with reference to the essentials of Christian faith and obedience, is the one and only real foundation principle of close communion. Baptists talk and think the church ordinance theory, but they build on the intuitively perceived principle that community of interests is the true foundation for communion. Notice the reasoning. "Courtesy" may justify overriding the exclusiveness of the church ordinance theory in the case of fellow-Baptists. Why? Because fellow-Baptists are scriptural in faith and practice, i. e., they agree with us. And pedobaptists may not be received,-why? Simply, of course, because they lack the qualifications that Baptists have;--they are not scripturalthey do not agree with us. Dr. Hovey, in the article above quoted, after stating the church ordinance theory in the standard fashion, drops it out of sight and states the reasons 1 See Hovey in Bib. Sac., ubi supra; Theodosia Ernest; etc.

for close communion, as follows: "None can properly be invited to join with us in the service, who could not be welcomed without change of views to full membership." "Those who are giving, and pledged to give, the weight of their influence against what is believed to be essential in doctrine and practice, cannot properly be received into its [the church's] fellowship" (p. 162). There is fellowship between those who are true "fellows"-that is all.

Baptists are evidently groping after a theory of interchurch communion. They fail to find, because, partly perhaps from a taint of sacramentalism, they confound the Lord's Supper with communion, and suppose that when they have settled the doctrine that the Supper is a church ordinance they have gone a long way toward settling the communion controversy, when in fact they have not touched it. The fault is one of logic-premise and conclusion erroneously conjoined.

2. Close communion is weak in its facts, in assuming that church fellowship is expressed by the union of churches or of their members in the observance of the Supper, and not otherwise. The maxim is, "We grant Christian fellowship, and withhold church fellowship." But under the head of Christian fellowship, so avowed, there is included almost every conceivable form of church union. Baptist churches dismiss their regular services to unite with pedobaptist churches in all manner of religious meetings; there is free interchange of pulpits; and pedobaptist ministers are invited to participate in the recognition of Baptist churches, the ordination of ministers, and what not. Only they must not sit with them at the Lord's table, since that would involve an expression of church fellowship for the unbaptized.

And what, pray, is church fellowship? We have seen that fellowship is the spiritual sympathy, or the outward affiliation, that results from our being "fellows" in the possession of some "common" interest. The affiliation is the natural and

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normal expression of the spiritual oneness.

Those who unite

in any common cause thereby express fellowship for each other with respect to the matter in hand; and that, not accidentally and capriciously, but uniformly and by a necessity of divine law. It is always true that a voluntary affiliation based upon a community of interests is the voicing of a real spiritual fellowship. And this is equally true if the parties to the union are associations of people instead of individuals. It is the union, nothing else, that constitutes the expression of fellowship. And when churches as such unite in any Christian work or service, then and there you will find all there ever is anywhere of church fellowship. There is inter-church fellowship at the Lord's table, not because the Supper has been divinely elected and adapted to be the sole vehicle of church fellowship, for it has not, but for the single reason that churches as such are actually or representatively in union there. That is what constitutes church fellowship-churches acting as fellows. And to assert, as the standard argument for close communion does, that a union of churches at the Supper gives rise to church fellowship, but that a union of churches as such in other religious meetings does not express church fellowship, but something different, namely, Christian fellowship,—shows, to say the least, an astonishing misapprehension as to the nature and determining principles of church fellowship.

Close communion avows a withholding of church fellowship from pedobaptists. The practice is consistent with that profession in one case out of a hundred, namely, at the Lord's table.

In the other ninety nine cases, namely, in all other church unions, there is inconsistency.

3.

There is no valid and scriptural distinction, like that supposed in close communion, between church fellowship and Christian fellowship. They are but different conceptions of one and the same thing. Christian fellowship, regarded not as a spiritual fact but as a principle of co-operation among Christians, is fellowship based upon a mutual recognition of

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