If, after examining the Scriptures to see what they call "the church" (set up at Pentecost), we turn to that which man calls "the church" now-a-days, what a contrast! and how searching to one's own soul the differences! 'Tis well to take heed-for the power of circumstances-mighty, whether for good or for evil, upon man-is mighty, in proportion as a man fails in practical self-judgment, and in discernment (according to God), of that which is around him.
" The church" was a body called out from the world, and from under him that is the god of this world (Satan). GOD, the Holy Ghost, was the mighty Power of energy, in every way, in it; the Lord Jesus, gone on high for it, was its Head-Securer and Revealer in the glory of its charta of privileges, as His life here below was its ensample; and GOD, even the Father, was at once its Object and its Counselor. And the theory was practically exhibited in living men, spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
What men now honor in its place, whether endowed or only tolerated by the State-is it a something separated from this present evil world? Is it a place where self is crucified? Is it that in which Satan is detected and judged? Alas! Is it not rather.... but no, I will leave to conscience and to faith the question of whether man's church, or churches, approximate most in energy, character and objects, to the Bride of Christ, or to the Whore that sitteth upon many waters.
Then a man had more especially to give himself up to the energy, plans and objects, which pertained to that which was a habitation of God through the Spirit; now he has more especially to keep himself from the energy, plans, and objects of that which boasts of being the temple of the Lord, but is fast rolling on toward that confederacy which is the perfection of man's apostasy from God, both in civil government and in worship.