m and one another;
expressing that fellowship in a mutually helpful community life; and all
of its members trying to bear witness to others of the supreme worth of
Jesus. We get at what they think of themselves by the names they use:
they are "disciples," pupils of the Divine Teacher; "believers,"
trusting His God; "brethren," embodying His spirit toward each other;
"saints," men and women set apart to the one purpose of forwarding the
Kingdom; "of the Way," with a distinctive mode of life in the unseen and
the seen, following Jesus, _the_ Way. They called themselves the
Ecclesia--the called out for God's service; the Household of
Faith--insiders in God's family, sharers of His plans; the Temple of
God--those in whose life with each other and the world God's Spirit can
be seen and felt; the Body of Christ--the organism alive with His faith
and hope and love, through which He still works in the earth; the Israel
of God, the holy nation continuing the spiritual life and mission of
God's people of old--no new Church but the reformed and reborn Church of
God.

The main point for them was that in this new community the Spirit of God
was alive and at work, producing in its members Christlike characters
and equipping them for Christlike usefulness. A body without life is a
corpse; and the Church fairly throbbed with vitality. It naturally
organized itself for work, but in organizing it was not conscious of
conforming to some fixed plan already laid down, but of allowing the
Spirit freely to lead from day to day. Christians found among themselves
specially gifted men--apostles (of whom there were many beside the
Twelve), with talents for leadership and missionary
enterprise--prophets, teachers; and they instinctively held these men
highly in love for their works' sake. One thinks of a figure like Paul,
who claimed no human appointment or ordination, but whose divine
authority was recognized by those who owed their spiritual lives to him.
And beside this informal leadership of gifted individuals, a more formal
chosen leadership came into existence. God's Spirit used the materials
at hand; and Christians in various parts of the Roman world had been
accustomed to different types of organization in their respective
localities, and these types suggested similar offices in the Church.
Some had been accustomed to the town government of a Palestinian village
by seven village elders; and this may have suggested "the Seven" chosen
in Je