During the summer months, many denominations hold their annual national meeting. For Presbyterians, it is the General Assembly, where every congregation is able to send commissioners, teaching elders (ministers) and ruling elders, to deliberate matters affecting the entire church. These include oversight of colleges and seminaries, reports from foreign missions around the world and church planting ministry here in the United States, reviews of the work of education, publications, conferences, and a variety of administrative matters.
In recent years, there have been a number of critically important matters that come to the Assembly from Presbyteries (regional districts across the nation). These are often in the form of overtures, requesting that the denomination as a whole address doctrinal issues that threaten the “peace, purity, and unity of the church.” Satan’s strategy has not changed over the centuries. His hatred toward the Lord and His people (the church) has followed three basic avenues: dissention, heresy, and immorality. In our own time, some of these are threatening to infect the church by way of adopting principles that come by way of compromise with the culture around us.
With these challenges constantly pressuring the church, much prayer and diligence and insight are needed. At the heart of the matter is the fact that this is the church of Jesus Christ, His Bride, whom He has purchased with His blood, whom He owns as His precious possession, and where He promises to build His kingdom, one that will withstand the onslaught from the gates of hell and will prevail over all the kingdoms of mankind. And so, in the midst of these challenges, we cling tightly to His promise and continue to love His church, doing all we can to maintain her “peace, unity, and purity,” as we proclaim the gospel to the lost.
This is a matter about which we rightfully sing in worship. Our hymnals contain a section of hymns about the church. One of the best-known of these is “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ, Her Lord.” It was written in 1866 by Samuel John Stone (1839-1900), a minister in the Church of England. A graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, he first held a curacy in New Windsor. It was while there that he composed his Lyra Fidelium (see below). In 1870, he moved to St. Paul’s, Haggerston, where he became the vicar four years later. He remained there for twenty years before taking up his final post at All Hallows’ London Wall, also in London.
He wrote “The Church’s One Foundation” in response to a heresy that was spreading in the Anglican Church. A few years earlier, John Colenso, an Anglican bishop in South Africa, had published an essay questioning the inerrancy of Scripture. He believed that much of the Old Testament was mythology, and that Jesus had taught things about Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch which were incorrect. Several other Anglican bishops and ministers immediately responded to defend Christian orthodoxy. Though he was deposed for his teachings, it led to a schism in the church in South Africa. Stone wrote a series of twelve hymns, based on the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed. His collection was called Lyra Fidelium (Lyre of the Faithful). “The Church’s One Foundation” was based on the ninth article of the Creed, “I believe in the holy catholic church,” and is the only one of the twelve hymns still in use today. In the controversy of his day, we can appreciate the words in the third stanza.
Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.
When we consider the seriousness of errors that are making their way into churches today, both conservative and liberal, evangelical and progressive, the words to Stone’s hymn are compellingly appropriate.
This hymn became extremely popular not only in the United Kingdom but throughout much of the world as it has been translated into many languages to be sung by millions of believers throughout the world. At a conference of Anglican Bishops in England known as the Lambeth Conference, in 1866, the same year in which it was composed, his hymn was selected as the theme hymn. That historic meeting propelled Stone to become known as a prolific hymn writer, even though this is the only one of his hymns that remains in use today. The music for the hymn was incorporated into the recently composed missions hymn “Facing a Task Unfinished,” by Keith and Kristyn Getty.
Stanza 1 points us, in its opening phrase, to 1 Corinthians 3:11. “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” It is to Him that we look for truth, our mission, our identity, indeed our very life. Since the church is His creation, He owns her and we delight to live in complete obedience to and devotion toward Him. We are His beloved bride, purchased at the cost of His atoning blood (Acts 20:28). We have no right to stray from His Word, and do so at great peril to our health as individuals and as a church.
The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
she is His new creation by water and the word.
From heav’n He came and sought her to be His holy bride;
with His own blood He bought her, and for her life He died.
Stanza 2 adopts the Bible’s own language to identity the church as His elect, a bride chosen by the Father for the Son, foreordained in eternity past, based on His sovereign grace, not on any redeeming or attractive quality in ourselves. We are a holy nation drawn from “o’er all the earth.” And look at the multiple references to our spiritual unity as we are one people with our “charter of salvation” based on “one Lord, one faith, one birth,” professing “one holy name,” partaking of “one holy food,” and pressing on with “one hope.”
Elect from ev’ry nation, yet one o’er all the earth,
her charter of salvation one Lord, one faith, one birth:
one holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses with ev’ry grace endued.
Stanza 3 describes exactly the situation that we face today, not unlike the situation that prompted Stone to write the hymn in 1866. Indeed, the church in every age faces these same sorts of threats. On the one hand are the schisms and heresies that cause us to wonder with a scornful spirit that the beloved bride of Christ should be so sorely oppressed. But on the other hand are saints like us who are faithfully contending for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3), and crying out for aid, “How long?” We long for that day when “the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”
Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed,
by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed,
yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up: “How long?”
and soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.
Stanza 4 refreshes our hope. Though we are in midst of spiritual warfare as the church militant, we don’t give in to despair or discouragement, even when we’re weary from the battles. We have Jesus’ promise that ‘the church shall never perish,” even in times and places when it seems like she cannot survive. We have the Lord Himself to defend His bride. He will “guide, sustain, and cherish … her to the end.” Even when the threat comes from within of “false sons,” professing Christians who have sided with the world, “she ever shall prevail.”
The church shall never perish! Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish, is with her to the end;
Though there be those who hate her, and false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor she ever shall prevail.
Stanza 5 carries our positive hope and optimism forward to the end. We are surrounded by the “toil and tribulation of her war,” we are confident of that “consummation of peace forevermore.” We walk by faith and not by sight. The eyes of the flesh see hostility and declension, but the eyes of the soul see something marvelous: the final triumph and kingdom of Jesus Christ. “With the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest.” The day is coming when “the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.”
‘Mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.
Stanza 6 points us beyond the present strife to remember that right now we have “union with God, the Three in One,” so that we are joined to Him as we struggle and hope. More than that, we also have “mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won.” What a marvelous reality that we are so intimately connected with the Lord at this very moment, and also with those in glory who have gone before, that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us (Hebrews 12:1). We conclude the hymn with the prayer that the Lord would enable us to persevere in the race, and that He would grant us the grace to be able to dwell with Him as part of that heavenly throng of the meek and lowly in their honored victorious condition.
Yet she on earth hath union with God, the Three in One,
and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won.
O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we,
like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee.
The tune was composed by London-born Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876), the grandson of the famous beloved hymn writer Charles Wesley. The tune name AURELIA is the Latin word for “golden,” and was first used for the hymn “Jerusalem the Golden.” It was the 1866 Lambeth Bishops Conference that chose the tune for Stone’s hymn.
Here are two opportunities to watch and listen to the hymn.
The first should thrill your soul as we can be joined in spirit with these saints in India!
What a great way to experience the “oneness” in the second stanza.
The second is a glorious anthem arrangement by Dan Forrest,
performed in the Chapel at Duke University in North Carolina.
(Turn up the volume on your speakers!)