The Old Lady

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 22]

     This is the rather affectionate designation used by the British folk for The Church of England. This great communion is regarded as being a little doddery and senile, living in the past and confused by the present. With many sources of income cut off and with inflation taking its toll, the ancient dowager finds herself hard put to maintain her standards of the past. She is laughed at behind her back, criticized to her face, and mocked on the side, even by those who are her best friends.

     Most of those who know her feel that she has nothing worthwhile to contribute to an age dominated by Beatles and mods.

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She dwells alone in stately aloofness from a swinging world except for an occasional visit to a coffeehouse where the litany consists of the kind of poetry which can only send those who are already gone.

     It is the fate of every sect to grow old, and to wonder what the world is coming to since it is no longer going to it. This is just as true of sects which suffer from delusions of grandeur and think "we are the people and wisdom will die with us." A sect can suffer from dementia the same as an individual. And to be mistaken about one's own identity does not help him to clarify his relationship with others.

     But the church of God is ageless and timeless. It was never wound up and will never run down. Its message is ever the same in content and never the same in its presentation. It speaks to men when and where they are, and as they are. It has no language of its own but employs the tongues of men in order to reach men. It never talks to itself except when it cannot interpret its message.

     The church is not drab or discouraging. It never stifles or squelches. Like Moses, its "eye is not dimmed nor its natural force abated," by the passage of years. It is vibrant, rejoicing, exuberant, filled with faith and filling others with hope.

     Those who think that the church has served her time and is on the way out, reveal what is happening to them and not to the church. The one body can never die as long as its head lives, and he will live forever. Even the sepulcher had to release him from its clammy grasp at the touch of an angelic hand. Certainly the fortunes and figures of a sect will rise and wane, for sects are crystallized from movements which begin with men. And anything for which men can now give statistics of membership is nothing but a sect.

     The church of God is composed of all the saved of all the earth. No partisan journal can print its statistics. The editors who try demonstrate their ignorance rather than prophetic vision. It is enough for the rest of us to remember that the Lord knoweth them that are His.