"And
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto
him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matt.
16:16-18). "And if he refuse to hear them,
tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the
church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the
publican" (Matt. 18:17).
"For
where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).
"Now
ye are the body of Christ, and members each in his
part" (1 Cor. 12:27. R.V. MARGIN).
"...being
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in
whom each several building, fitly framed together,
groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also
are builded together for a habitation of God in the
Spirit" (Eph. 2:20-22).
"As
he is, even so are we in this world" (1 John
4:17).
In
continuing our meditation in connection with the
spiritual house, I have an emphasis now in my heart which
I feel peculiarly to be of the Lord. For quite a few, it
will be no new word or truth, but even for such the fresh
emphasis may be of the Lord. In any case, they must seek
to co-operate in the word of the Lord for those for whom
He may specially mean it. Let us, nevertheless, all seek
to enter into the word in a new way.
We are
looking at some of the major features and purposes of
God's spiritual house to which we belong, and the one
which is to occupy us now is this, that this spiritual
house is here as being a representation of Christ in
every place. We have seen that the Church is Christ. He
is the Church, He is God's temple, God's dwelling place.
It is in Him that we find God. He serves the purpose of
all that the Church is intended to mean. The Church is
Christ. But now, so far as this world is concerned, the
Church is Christ as distributed, though not divided; that
is, Christ as in all His members by His Spirit; yet not
so many Christs, but remaining one Christ. The Apostle
raised the question amongst the Corinthians, as you know
- Is Christ divided? - and there is almost a tone of
scandal at the very idea that Christ should be divided.
He remains one, and He is one, though in so many, and in
that oneness of Christ in all His members we have the
Church. Men will only find the Lord, where we are
concerned, so far as Christ is in us. That is the purpose
of the Church.
The Vital Character of the Local
Assembly
But now we come to consider the
special importance of local corporate expressions of
Christ, Christ as represented corporately in every place.
It is a well-known and understood thing among us that
what the Lord Jesus said as recorded in the Gospels was
but the truth in germ form. Because the Spirit was not
yet given, He could only speak as in an objective way,
putting things in a figurative form or in an undeveloped
way. All that is in the Gospels is like that, awaiting
the day of the Spirit's dwelling within believers so that
the much larger meaning contained in His utterances might
be imparted. And, amongst all the rest, there is this
fragment which we have read in Matt. 18:20 - "For
where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them." We shall lose a
very great deal if we take that simply as it stands in
the Gospel. It was never intended to be taken just in
that form. In the later revelation of the Holy Spirit,
that passage, with all others, is taken up and its
earlier meaning is made clear, and what we have as the
fuller revelation is this, that Christ is peculiarly
present when two or three are gathered together, because
He has committed Himself to His Body. To put that round
the other way, it is the Body of Christ which is
necessary for the bringing in of the fullness of Christ.
"The body," says the Apostle, "is not one
member, but many" (1 Cor. 12:14). But then the same
Apostle says, "Ye are the body of Christ" (1
Cor. 12:27), and he is speaking of a local company.
Christ is peculiarly present when it is a corporate
expression. The Lord has bound Himself up with His Church
for manifestation. It may be true that the Lord is in us
individually: it is true; and it may equally be true that
the Lord, as in us individually, will express Himself in
us and through us as individuals, but the Lord is
limited, and very severely limited, when it is only an
individual matter. His thought is otherwise, and so He
makes this statement. He might have left a thing like
this unsaid. It would seem to have been quite
unnecessary, quite beside the mark. But no, He said it,
and when He has said a thing, it means something. Indeed,
it bears all the significance of such a One as He is
having said it. That means it carries tremendous weight
if He says it; and He has said this thing in these
precise words - "Where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of
them." He might have said, Wherever there is one in
My Name, there am I! Well, that is true, but the Lord did
not put it in that way: and you notice that He is dealing
with practical matters. He has used the word
"Church." Certain people have to be dealt with
by the Church, and when the Church deals with them, it is
the Lord. That is what He is saying.
You must bring these two things together.
Here is someone guilty of remissness in spiritual life.
Well, someone go and tell him, and if he does not hear,
take one or two more, and if he refuse to hear them, tell
it to the Church. "If he refuse to hear the Church
also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the
publican. Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye
shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what
things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall
agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask,
it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them." The Lord is in the
midst in an executive way in the Church's administration,
where two or three are gathered together. I am not going
to deal with that phase of Church functioning, but I use
it to bring out this principle, that there is a specific
value bound up with a corporate expression of Christ, and
a value of very great importance.
Some Fatal Hindrances to God's Purpose
(a) Individualism
Now, let me stop here for a parenthesis.
There are some fatal mistakes into which Christians have
fallen, and one of these is the principle of the
individual line in the place of the corporate. I say that
has been a fatal mistake. It has been fatal to spiritual
growth, fatal to spiritual fullness, to spiritual power,
to spiritual light and to spiritual life. There are many
Christians who are only concerned with individuals.
Concern for the individual is of course right, but the
Lord only saves the individual with the Church in view,
with the corporate Body in mind. We must settle it and be
very clear that this dispensation, from the ascension and
exaltation of Christ, and the giving of the Holy Spirit,
to the taking away of the Church at the end, is marked
out by God as the period in all the periods of this
world's history for securing, not individuals as so many
saved men and women, but a one Body - the Church.
Individuals only figure before God in the light of the
Church, the one Body, and, if you and I fail to recognize
that as the governing law of God's dealings with men in
this dispensation, we are going to forfeit a great
measure of what the Lord intended for us; limit and
straiten our spiritual lives and experiences, and cause
weakness in the very work of God itself.
I hope you have understood that. It is of
very great importance that we should settle this. You
will notice that these two things usually go together. It
is the salvation of the individual that engages and
occupies so many, and when they have got the individual
saved, brought to the Lord, they have no further concern
but to go and get more individuals and bring them into
salvation. Those two things go together, individualism
and salvation in its merely initial sense of souls being
brought to the Lord. After that, there is no more. That
has proved a fatal thing in the history of God's
interests, and today we are finding it to be one of the
things which is representing the greatest difficulty to
Christians themselves and to any fuller work of God. I
mean this, that you everywhere meet a large number of
people who have just gone that far. All that they have is
just their own personal salvation, in the sense of
forgiveness of sins, peace with God, those rudiments of
the Gospel, and they have been there ten, twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty years; and today as you meet them and speak
with them, you come up against one of two things.
On the one hand, there is an utter
inability now to apprehend anything more than the simple
elements of salvation; they have not got ability to do
it. All those spiritual senses and faculties which ought
to have been developed so that they could receive much
larger and fuller revelation from God have been stunted,
have never been developed by exercise, and in spiritual
faculties they remain simply infants after all these
years. I am only giving you the Scripture in saying that.
You know, Paul had to say that very thing to the
Corinthians - "I could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I
fed you with milk, not with meat." To the Hebrews it
was the same: "When by reason of the time ye ought
to be teachers, ye have need again that someone teach
you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles
of God; and are become such as have need of milk... solid
food is for fullgrown men, even those who by reason of
use have their senses exercised to discern good and
evil." Paul had to deplore in his own day that there
had been this fatal arrest and he said, in effect, Here I
am, just full of Divine light for you, and I have to keep
back all this that God has given me for His Church
because of that! I say that is fatal for the Church -
that the Lord should give abundant revelation for His
Church's growth and fullness and functioning, and that
there should be, after years and years and years, such a
state that people are totally incapable in themselves of
receiving it, understanding it. You meet that condition
today everywhere. They cannot, after so long a time.
On the other hand, of course, you find
those who after a lifetime turn to you and say, Oh, that
I had known this before! Oh, that I had been told this
before! Oh, that I had had this years ago! Why not? It
has been here all the time. It is because of this fatal
individualistic line. For the greater part, the work of
God since the early days of the Church, with the
exception of very small things here and there, has been
just on this line of getting individuals saved and
leaving them there. It is fatal in the long run to all
that God intended; and then people come up against the
fact that it is so. Oh, that I had known it long ago!
Well then, while the individual is very important, and
has to be dealt with in the light of the other as an
individual, we must note that, if the individual is put
in the place of the corporate, nothing but the most
sorrowful consequences can follow. That is one fatal
mistake.
(b) The Prevailing "Church
System"
Another fatal thing is that which is
represented by the present "Church system." The
present system which obtains in the largest realm is
almost entirely a matter of congregations and preaching
places, places where people gather together or congregate
in a religious way - yes, maybe an evangelical way, yet
but congregations - and they come together to go through
a certain rota and, in the main, to hear something
preached, and they go away. Now, while there are
variations and degrees in that system, that very largely
is the position: and that is not a corporate expression
of Christ. That is a congregation. That is not a body.
That is not the Body locally expressed and functioning.
It is something less. What is the result? The same result
as in the other case, namely, very little spiritual
growth. I am being very frank now. I want to talk out of
my heart because I feel the Lord wants to get us
somewhere in this hour on this matter, and I must run the
risk of treading upon sensibilities in order to get
there. The result spiritually in this second instance is
very largely the same as in the other case of the merely
individualistic, and we are everywhere finding people
today in that present Church system who have not a
glimmer of light on the Lord's fuller purpose and do not
know what you are talking about: and multitudes of them
have no interest in anything else. This thing, this going
to church, this congregation, this going through a rota,
this place of the public worship line of things has come
into the place of the true local expression of the Body
of Christ, and has set that aside. Today, speaking of the
Church in that sense, it is the Church like that which is
in a state of terrible spiritual infancy and immaturity
and unenlightenment after all these centuries, and people
born and brought up in it do not grow spiritually. I know
there are some who do grow despite it, but I am speaking
of the thing itself. It has become a fatal menace to the
real purpose of God.
(c) The Making of "The
Gospel Mission" to be Everything
Now, there is a third thing, and that is
"The Gospel Mission," which also takes the
place of the local church as spiritually formed. Now,
this is no denunciation of Gospel Missions, and I am not
saying that Gospel Missions ought not to be. I am far,
very far from saying that. I am, of course, not speaking
now of those evangelistic missions that are held among
the churches from time to time, but of that which has
assumed the character of a permanent institution in
numerous places. If then you take the Gospel Mission and
have that as though it were everything that there is, and
you remain satisfied just to go to the Gospel Mission
where the Gospel is preached to the unsaved, and keep on
the Gospel Mission line of things; well, you are simply
dwarfing your own spiritual life. It is a thing which has
in multitudes of cases just become a substitute for the
spiritually formed local expression of Christ. Christ is
much more than that, and you note that the people who
live all their lives in the Gospel Mission are the people
who are most terribly immature, spiritually ignorant and
unenlightened. Oh yes, rejoicing in Christ as their
Saviour - I do not question that - glorying in personal
salvation; but oh, where is vocation, where is the
fullness of Christ, where is God's eternal purpose being
worked out? Not there. That just goes one step, and one
step is not the whole road to God's end. Let there be
these things, but let them be as auxiliaries to the
fuller thought of God, as instrumentalities of the
Church, and let them not be the whole thing. If they are,
they will fatally affect the life of God's people and
spiritual progress.
You see, the difference is this. Take a
bunch of flowers, a bunch of roses or any other
particular kind of flower. They are of the same species,
and they have the same life in them. That is a
congregation, not a body! The difference between a bunch
of flowers which are all alike, all sharing the same
life, and the root and the plant, is a very big one. Give
me the rose, root and plant or bush, and what shall I
have? Well, I shall have this difference that, whereas
the bunch of flowers has the life, it just goes so far.
That is all and there it ends. It will never go beyond
that. Give me the plant or bush, and it will grow. It may
pass through a paroxysm of death for a season, but next
year it will come back again and there will be more; and
then another experience of dying and resurrection, and
again there will be more, all in the same plant. That is
a body, that is an organism, not a bunch. And that is the
difference between a congregation, so many Christians,
units coming together as units, and a spiritual organism,
a local expression of the Body of Christ: and it is the
Body which is God's thought, not a congregation, not the
bunch of flowers. But oh, the Lord's people are so much
like the bunch of flowers! It is true they are all of the
same species: they are Christians, they are children of
God, they are all sharing the same life, but oh, they are
not there as one organism in one place growing with the
increase of God, passing through corporate convulsions of
death and resurrection and making spiritual increase in
that way. What I have said about the present system and
the missions is just like a bunch of flowers. Yes, they
belong to the Lord, and they have the same life, they are
all the Lord's children; but they just come to a certain
point and they never go beyond that. That is true. I have
had enough experience to make me sure it is true. Alas,
many of them do not want to go any further, and many of
them resent the suggestion that it is necessary to go any
further. However, that is not God's thought about it.
God's thought is of the root and the plant as a whole, a
living organism here and there as representing and
expressing Christ Himself. The plant grows and makes
increase. The bunch simply goes so far and then it stops.
Now, Satan is not adverse to meetings as
such, but Satan is adverse to local families, local
expressions of the Body of Christ. Hence you have the
great history of Satan's persistent effort to scatter the
children of God and break up their corporate life, to
bring an end to their practical functioning together.
The Purpose and Function of the Church,
as also of its Local Expression
So we have to see exactly what the purpose
and the function of a local expression of the Body or the
Church or House of God really is, and we can see it if we
look at the type that leads to the antitype. What the
temple of old was in figure, the Church is in spiritual
reality, and what the Church is in spiritual reality as a
whole, the local company is to be. It is remarkable that
local churches in the New Testament are always viewed in
the light of the whole Body. Thus Paul will say to the
local church at Corinth, "Ye are the body of
Christ." Now, it would not do for Corinth to take
hold of that and say, You see, WE are the Body
of Christ! That would be giving a wrong meaning to it.
The point in the inspired declaration is this, that every
local company is in representation what the whole Body
is: what the whole Body is in God's thought is to be seen
here and there and there.
(1) The Meeting Place Between God and
Man
Now we continue by way of analogy from the
temple. What was the temple? In the first place, the
temple of old was the meeting place between God and man.
That is the first function of the temple, of the House of
God. Christ was that in the fullest sense, in a far
greater sense than was ever [the] temple of old. Here is Son of
Man and Son of God blended in one Person. It is
tremendously significant that in Matthew 16 that very
fact comes to light. Christ, interrogating His disciples,
uses one term, and, in getting the Divinely-inspired
response through Peter, the other term is used. "Who
do men say that the Son of man is?" Peter said,
"Thou art the Son of the living God." "Son
of man," "Son of God": and that is by
revelation of God. Here is God and Man met together in
one Person, in one place. And of Himself the Lord Jesus
later said, Destroy this temple, this sanctuary, and in
three days I will raise it up again. Carnally minded Jews
thought He was speaking of that material temple, but He
was speaking of Himself, His own body. This temple -
transition of thought from the temple in Jerusalem to
Christ personally, the meeting place of God and man -
that is Christ.
Now Christ corporately expressed is the
Church according to revelation in the New Testament, and
therefore where Christ is corporately found in
representation, and livingly functioning, there God
should be met with, there God and man should come into a
peculiar touch and relationship. The testimony of all who
come into such a realm where Christ is really corporately
expressed ought to be, I find the Lord there! and that
ought to be enough. That is the answer. Do you find the
Lord there? Does the Lord meet with you there? Ah, that
is the first governing thing, and not other questions
associated with gathering together or congregations; no,
the Lord Himself, and that not now as a personal thing
between myself and the Lord, seeing that I, personally
can have touch with the Lord anywhere, but now as a
matter of the Church. Do I meet the Lord in the midst of
that people? If so, I have come into the realm where
God's thought is having expression: and that is a realm
of tremendous possibilities.
Have you read that little book by A. J.
Gordon, "How Christ came to Church"? It might
do you good to read it, though rather perhaps from an
objective or outside point of view. But let me tell you
as quickly as I can the content. Dr. Gordon one Saturday
was sitting preparing his sermon for the following day in
his study, when he fell asleep: and he dreamt that he was
in his own church and in his pulpit on the Lord's day.
His was a very fine church with its Gothic pillars and
arches. The church was crowded, and he was in the pulpit
about to commence the service, when the door opened at
the back and a stranger entered and walked down the aisle
looking from side to side for a seat. As he got nearer
the front, someone stepped out and showed him a vacant
seat. Dr. Gordon goes on to describe how he went on with
the service, and how his eyes constantly turned to that
stranger. If he looked in some other way, he found his
eyes coming back to him. Dr. Gordon said, "I
registered the resolve that I would go down to speak to
the stranger after the service." After it was over,
and without showing noticeable hurry, he just as quickly
as he could made his way down and tried to intercept the
stranger, but before he reached the door, the stranger
was gone. With great disappointment, he said to the man
at the door, Do you know who that stranger was you let in
this morning? The man at the door said, Don't you know
who that was? That was Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, said Dr.
Gordon, why did you not detain Him? I would love to have
spoken to Him. Oh, said the man, do not worry: He was
here today, He will come again. (Well, as an aside, that
double reply bore fruit in two volumes from Dr.
Gordon's pen; the one on "The Work of the Holy
Spirit," and the other on "The Coming of the
Lord.")
Dr. Gordon says he went away with these
musings - Jesus of Nazareth has been in my church today.
What was I saying? I was talking about Him. How did I
talk about Him? Did He discern in anything that I was
saying the faintest tinge of unreality? Did I speak of
Him, not knowing He was present, as I would have if I had
known? What did He think of my manner, my matter, my
conducting of the service? What did He think about our
choir, our singing. It was all about Him, but was it
worthy of Him? I wonder what He thought about our Gothic
building?
That is
the story in brief. But what has come to me is this: Is
that our conception of things? You see, in that the
suggestion is that the Church is one thing and Christ
another, and that the Church can be in all sorts of
respects certain things, and Christ quite another. Oh no,
that is not God's Church. God's Church is Christ, and
where you find the Church according to God, there you
find Christ, and no disparities, no inconsistencies,
contradictions: it is the Lord. All the other is not
Christ at all. The Church is Christ, and if it is Christ
who is pre-eminent when the Lord's people come together,
God is there Himself. It is on the ground of Christ and
Christ's presence that men meet with God. You know as
well as I do that men cannot meet with God in us as we
are. We cannot of ourselves bring men into touch with
God. No priesthood as such can bring men to God. But if
the Lord Jesus is in us and we can bring men into touch
with the Lord Jesus we have brought them into touch with
God. But if He is not there in us either personally or
collectively, we may talk about God till Doomsday, but
men will not meet Him. That is what the Church is when
truly constituted. It is the ground upon which men meet
God and God meets men, and that ground is Christ Himself;
and there is peculiar and special value and significance
bound up with this corporate expression of Christ in the
matter of men meeting God. I believe that a far greater
impact of the Lord can be registered upon men by a
company of Christ-indwelt men and women being together in
the power of the Holy Spirit than can be by any number of
isolated Christian units. A meeting-place between God and
man, the vehicle of Divine life.
You see Ezekiel's temple. The house is now
finished according to God's mind, and it is out from the
house, down the steps, the river flows, deepening and
widening on its way, and wheresoever the river cometh
everything lives. Trees are seen on either bank and
everything is living, until at length it empties itself
into the Dead Sea; and even that death is swallowed up in
the life that is out from the sanctuary. It is this
corporate expression of Christ, the Church, from which
there is the ministration of God's life to men, and that
is why the enemy wants to break it up. That was our point
in our previous meditation. The scattering or dividing of
the Lord's people, the making of the Lord's people into
so many individuals and units alone, without a real
corporate life, is a strategical move on the part of the
enemy against that life. We know in our own experience
that, if the enemy can get in between even two of us to
set us apart in spirit, our life is under arrest and the
river is not released until we mend that bridge, heal
that division. That is very significant. The enemy is
after that sort of thing. He is against the life, because
the Church is the vehicle of God's life.
(2) The Embodiment and Expression of
God's Thoughts
Then again, the temple was the embodiment
and expression of God's thoughts. Every stone, everything
used, all size, dimensions and measurements, materials,
they all represented some thought of God. God's mind was
expressed in all. It was a symbol of a spiritual
attribute. Peter, following up that word which is before
us - "a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5) says a
little later that the object of the spiritual house is to
"show forth the excellencies of him who called you
out of darkness into his marvellous light." The
temple was to show forth the excellencies of the Lord,
the embodiment of Divine thoughts, and the Lord's people
in any place should be the embodiment and expression of
Divine thoughts. There should be there a disclosing of
God's thoughts in a very blessed way, a coming to know
the mind of the Lord for His people, a rich unveiling of
what is in the heart of God concerning His own. That is
how it ought to be: not just addresses or sermons, but a
ministry of revelation under the Holy Spirit through an
opened heaven. That is of value to the Lord and to His
people. But it wants a living company for that: and oh,
how we know it! Sometimes we are not all alive to the
Lord for some reason or other when we come together.
Perhaps we are tired, or have been bothered, something
has come in to cast down, and although the Lord has
prepared for us some rich feast, something He wants to
make known, He cannot; He is held back, and there is just
a state of lifelessness. But let us come together in the
Spirit, alive unto the Lord, and the Lord's thoughts come
out and they flow. The condition of the company of the
Lord's people very largely determines what kind of time
we have. It very largely depends upon us how much the
Lord can give us. The company of the Lord's people is to
be the expression and embodiment of God's thoughts. That
is what it exists for.
(3) The Sphere of Divine Government and
Authority
Then the temple was the place of God's
government. Things were brought there to be decided upon,
to be judged: and Peter says, "Judgment must begin
at the house of God"; and that is Matt. 18 again.
Tell it to the Church, let the Church decide on this. It
is the place of Divine government. I cannot stay with
that but you see that the corporate company, livingly
constituted according to Christ, is of very real and
practical consequence to God in this world now: and oh,
how important it is for life's sake, for light's sake,
for power's sake, that we all be consciously and livingly
a part of such a local expression of God.
I do want to say this to you from my
heart, that it is necessary for you, dear friends, to be
a part of, to be in the midst of, to have behind you, a
living, functioning company of the Lord's people on this
basis. I know the difference, and many of you know the
difference, the difference it makes in depth, in
strength. For many years, I was a minister, as we say, of
different churches, congregations; but oh, I know the
difference between that and what has obtained since. It
is not a difference of the natural calibre of the people
at all, but a difference in kind. The one was a part of a
system largely organized and run by man for religious
purposes: the other is something formed of the Spirit;
and that is an immense difference. I know the difference
when I meet things. All you can say is that those who
have a living local company of the Lord's people of whom
they are a part, have something that other people have
not. There is measure about them. There is something
about them that is more than you will find in the other
things of which I have spoken, where it is purely
individualistic or formal. It is very important. The
Church is intended to be this, and a thing can only know
its Divinely appointed resources as it functions
according to God's intention. If therefore we are called
for this as the Church, then we must be the Church in
order to fulfil our great purpose and know our great
fullness. I do ask you to think about this very
seriously. It is a thing of no little importance, is this
matter of the local fellowship of the Lord's people.
I know it may raise problems for some of
you. "There is nothing in our neighbourhood and I do
not know how it is possible." But there is an
answer, and the answer is a simple one, although it may
test you. If this is God's mind, you go to the Lord about
it. 'Lord, if this is your mind, either bring me into
such a thing or bring about such a thing where I am.'
Hold on to the Lord for that. Brother Nee, when he was
here, speaking about this matter and talking with one and
another about it, spoke of how in one place this very
thing arose between someone and the Lord, and how that
one held on to the Lord for several years over the
matter; and then how that, after holding on for so long,
gradually the formation commenced, a second being joined
to the first, and then a third, and then another. But
they were greatly exercised for a long time, standing
themselves into the meaning and value of God's thought
and holding on to Him for it to find expression and
become a reality. You see, that is just it. That is our
ministry; through prayer to bring into being what God
intends. If we can be put off easily, well then, we have
not seen the vision, the thing has not gone very deep.
That is only said by way of helping with the problem that
arises. Let us be exercised about the Church and let the
Church be of greater importance to us than the problem,
then I think we shall find a way through.