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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 1.

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ORGANIZATION

By EARNEST A. RAYMOND

The Science of Life's Development
EARNEST A. RAYMOND
HEAVEN throbbed with earth's pain, and the entire universe sorrowed with sorely afflicted man in his sadness. In the heart of love divine, the great life-center of this vast system of perfect sympathy, was found the healing balm—its own vital force—to strengthen, sustain, and save this stricken member. And then it was that the angels of heaven found a welcome task assigned them; for, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?”
The great work was worthy of Him who undertook it; for sin has benumbing power, and swiftly following in its wake is the lethargy of death. As when a limb, becoming cramped, distorted, causing its life-current to be hindered, deflected, turned back upon itself, becomes benumbed, paralyzed, and finally dead, so the human life in all its manifestations—physical, mental, and moral—is benumbed, as it turns aside and wrongfully uses the current of its life-power.
In the one case the only hope and cure is in restoring the limb to its normal state, by exercise, by giving the life-current the fullest, freest opportunity to do its work; so in the other, the only chance of life, of salvation, lies in God's human member being raised, opened up, energized by the inflowing and outworking of the stream of His own life's current. The one great law of God's life, of His love, is constant outflowing, constant working. Only by outflowing is more room made for the influx, and the channel ever enlarged. Thus life's current is always warm, constantly expanding to life's greater exercise. As the traveler caught in the freezing storm found warmth and life by rousing and helping his fellow, so must all men, by working for men.
Such was the work of God for men; such the example Christ came to give; such was the rescue work of His inauguration; and as its great Demonstrator, He became its head.
Such a system as this Christ calls His Church, living by life inflowing, growing to greater life by working together with Him in outflowing, increasing with “the increase of God” as new elements are constantly being reorganized and gathered in; and so the whole grows to “an holy temple in the Lord.”
“God hath tempered [blended] the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked; that there should be no schism [or division] in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.”
“And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. . . .”
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.”
“Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”
“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”
As the members of the human body are united for mutual sympathy and help, so are the human members of “the body of Christ,” the Church. As in the one there is a “schism,” a division, a sloughing off, when nature's perfect plan of organization is not in operation, so is there in the Church, for the same reason.
Will there be “schisms”—poor, weak, tried members of Christ's body for whom He died, falling behind on the long heavenward march, lying down to die spiritually,—yes, and physically, many a time—if all the members “have the same care one for another?”—By no means; for then would all be perfectly “knit together,” bearing common burdens, sharing common joys; they would fall or stand together, saying each to each, as God to Ephraim, “How shall I give thee up?” And would they fall together? Then great indeed the fall; for heaven itself is indissolubly bound by its Spirit, its very life, in such a brotherhood.
Know we of suffering members, any wounded in spirit, perchance by us? Are there any sick from bodily infirmities, for lack of the knowledge of nature's laws which we might give? And, O members of Christ, are there not many slowly failing, gradually sinking into untimely graves, for lack of health-restoring food, the price of which we hold beyond their reach? Shall not professed Christians cease forever to thus tantalize poor, sick, suffering sinners? Has He who “giveth us richly all things to enjoy,” condemned the monopolies of the world that the saints might enjoy an unbroken “corner” on His healthful, healing bounties?
Who taught us this knowledge? Who gave us this power over nature's store and treasure-house? “Every good gift and every perfect gift . . . cometh down from the Father of lights.” And for what purpose?
“But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal: literally, bearing together, helping to bear it; mutual profit.”
And shall we murmur to ourselves, The cause, the cause; it is for the cause; and then go on oppressing the hireling in his wages, seeking to bind down, in the iron mold and treadmill activity of institutions, the God-given individuality of thought, of strength, of time and means, belonging to those who should be “workers together with God” instead of men-pleasers?
Shall our institutions become indeed mere forms from which the life has fled; little better than empty shells, filled with the roar, the murmur and complaint, of the restless sea, “whose waters cast up mire and dirt”?
Could not Christians reflect with profit on Christ's denunciation of the iniquitous Jewish custom of saying “Corban,” meaning that it is a gift for the support of the temple (the cause), over the means, a large part of which rightfully belongs to others? Is this the cause of Christ? Are we wholly sure that the cause of “the loaves and fishes” is not really paramount? May God forgive; man knows not what he does.
The only hope lies in each man rousing to activity. Let no one say, I have no gift; there is nothing that I can do. The Scripture says: “Every man hath his proper [his own, particular, special, different from all others, and which He alone can exercise] gift from God, one man after this manner, another after that.”
Are the sacred duties and obligations, the inalienable rights, the glorious possibilities and privileges of harmoniously developed individuality, recognized and taught and lived in any adequate sense among us? IT IS THE BASIS OF ORGANIZATION. It is the perfect flower of the human plant. Together they will reflect, like rainbow tints unnumbered, the infinitely varied glory of the great I AM. Without it life has lost its meaning, eternity its charm.
Where are the educators among us? Are they indeed banished, or have they fled into unknown solitude?
Shall we, with sphinx-like, immovable gaze, have eyes only for the lead, the iron, the brass, in life, and pass by its true gold and precious stones? Does God's great mine yield naught but flint, that we pass by the diamond, the emerald, the ruby, and the turquoise?
For what do schools exist? What is it to educate? Is it not for this very thing,—to be used of God to recognize, to bring to light, to train, develop, the “proper gifts” of the matchless Giver to His children? Shall Ichabod, that mournful epitaph of glory flown, look down from the portals of all our schools and colleges? God forbid. It is time for the relief of the schools. Even now, in trumpet tones the Spirit calls, “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”
“And the eye can not say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.”
Let not the body forget its trust, the treasure for which it lives, the soul. How often has this bit of history repeated itself, and will perchance be repeated, “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.”
“Wherefore he saith, When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men . . . for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
Then the Church of God on earth will never outgrow God's natural plan of organization, not indeed till we all stand on time's almost deserted strand, clad in robes of perfect righteousness, waiting for Him who shall bear us to yonder eternal shore.
“There are diversities of gifts, . . . there are differences of administrations, . . . and there are diversities of operations, . . . but all these WORKETH that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.”
Here lies the motive power omnipotent; here the energizing force of the boundless universe; and yet its operations are all in the most perfect harmony. It is the unity of the Spirit. Dividing to every man severally as He will, God's Spirit touches the keynote, the basis of all organization, the individual. Thus, and only because of this, can the Spirit alone use, and work to the fullness of their powers, every gift of every man.
“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, . . . and have been all made to DRINK into one Spirit.”
Then each man, and woman, and child has only to drink that Spirit in, only to receive Him as He comes so freely from God, to find their powers, and place, and work, and go on their heavenward way rejoicing. Praise the Lord!
“LET US keep fresh in our memories all the tender mercies God has shown us.”