is representative character of
local Churches also appears in the expression common in his Epistles,
the "Church in" such and such a place.

The usage of St Paul's Epistles does not, therefore, encourage the idea
that the application of the term _ecclesia_ to particular associations
preceded its application to the whole body, but the contrary, and
plainly it expressed for him from the first a most sublime conception. I
may add that there is no reason to suppose that the use of the term
originated with him. We find it in the Gospel according to St Matthew,
the Epistle of St James and the Apocalypse of St John, writings which
shew no trace of his influence.

There is no passage of the New Testament from which it is possible to
infer clearly the idea which underlay its application to believers in
Jesus Christ. But when it is considered how full of the Old Testament
the minds of the first generation of Christians were, it must appear to
be in every way most probable that the word _ecclesia_ suggested itself
because it is the one most frequently employed in the Greek translation
of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) to render the Hebrew word
k[macron a]h[macron a]l, the chief term used for the assembly of Israel
in the presence of God, gathered together in such a manner and for such
purposes as forced them to realise their distinctive existence as a
people, and their peculiar relation to God. The believers in Jesus now
formed the _ecclesia_ of God, the true Israel, which in one sense was a
continuation of the old and yet had taken its place. This was the view
put forward by Dr Hort in his lectures on the Christian Ecclesia[9], and
it is at the present time widely, I believe I may say generally, held. I
may mention that the eminent German Church historians, A. Harnack[10]
and Sohm[11], give it without hesitation as the true one.

Among the Jews the thought of the people in its relation to God was
associated with great assemblies in the courts and precincts of the
temple at Jerusalem, which altogether overshadowed any expression of
their covenant relation to God as a people which they could find in
their synagogue-worship, however greatly they valued the bonds with one
another which were strengthened, and the spiritual help which they
obtained, through their synagogues. But Christians had no single,
central meeting-place for their common worship at which their ideal
unity was embodied. It was, therefore, all the more natural