Such is the difference between divine and sectarian ground.
Divine ground includes all that God has appointed to include; viz., all true children of God who are not mixed up with heretical doctrine (2 John), or defiled by unholy living (1 Cor. 5). It excludes all who are not God's children, and also such of His children as may contaminate themselves with evil-doctrinal or moral.
Sectarian ground includes all whom man chooses to include; to wit, those who agree to accept the peculiar tenets or order. It excludes all who decline to accept of these. The degree in which God's own marks for communion are respected may vary. Some might insist on having in only true children of God who accepted the tenets, others might admit all accepting these, without discrimination; but in every case where sectarian ground is taken up, not the Christianity, pure and simple, of the associates, but the agreement in the, principles of the sect, or acceptance of its " standards,' is the ground of gathering, association, or union.
Let us now suppose the apostle to have visited Corinth some Lord's day morning when this state of things was in existence. How would he have acted? Where would he have gone to break bread? You will not hesitate a moment, I am sure. He would have gone to the original assembly, which he had himself founded, and addressed as " the assembly of God which is at Corinth." Would he in any way have owned these dissenting bodies at all? I trow not. Had they come around him and claimed fellowship with him, or invited him to their assemblies and their tables, I can imagine with what energy he would have declaimed against their wickedness, and how unflinchingly he would have maintained the ground of God. Had they pleaded with him, as they might, that in refusing to own them he was wanting in charity, and bringing in question their Christianity, and refusing the fellowship of numbers of God's dear children, I can imagine how he would have turned on them, and said, " Your Christianity I deny not. God's children I do not doubt you to be; but you are naughty children, disobedient children, self-willed children, presumptuous children. You have deemed yourselves wiser than God; and presuming yourselves able to improve on what He left perfect, have trampled on His order, and violated in the most flagrant manner that charity and Christian fellowship you profess to claim, and to blame me for withholding. Know you not that I wrote to you by the Spirit of God that `charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth? And you, who have iniquitously departed from the truth of God, would have me, under the name of ' charity,' forsooth, to wink at and have fellowship with your iniquities. No, brethren, I have learned charity better than that. The truest, the broadest, the holiest charity I can show you, is to protest, as I now do, against your departures from God; to stand aloof from you, as I now do, until you turn from your evil practices, lay aside every one of your inventions, and return to the simple ground of God and of His church. Till you do this, I love you too well, and I love my Lord too well, to meet you.
Yourselves, as individuals, I rejoice to recognize as `brethren in the Lord,' though erring ones; but your organizations I can neither own, nor have aught to say to. Away with them!"
But perhaps you will be ready to turn on me and say, "Well, I own all this as true. I have no doubt it would have been pretty much so in the case you have supposed; but then the case is not parallel to that to which you want to apply it. You ' brethren ' say that the whole church has departed from God's ground, and when you began to meet there was no assembly still standing on the ground. So long as there was, the matter was easy and plain enough; but now it is different."
Well, I am quite ready to admit this feature of difference in the cases, though that does not in reality affect the principle. However, if you will give me leave to carry the supposition a little farther, I shall be able to show you a true parallel.
We will resume our supposed case as we left it; viz., Corinth with one genuine, and four sectarian, assemblies in it. We will farther suppose these sects to be really earnest people, with a real zeal for. Christ after their fashion, and a true love for souls. Their zeal leads them out in earnest missionary enterprise, and they spread the truth of the gospel, and are blessed to the saving of souls, whom they of course indoctrinate also in their special tenets, and organize into bodies, churches, or congregations, after their respective forms, and under their respective names. We will suppose that in a certain town in a certain island afar off from Corinth, where Christianity was. before unknown, the whole four have established themselves, and that among them they number some seven or eight hundred converts. These converts, as is natural, have taken their ideas of Christianity from those from whom they received it; and though the Scriptures have been put in their hands, have received the interpretations of them that their teachers have presented, so that they get along happily in their respective " denominations " with perhaps an occasional bit of controversy as to the points on which they differ.
One day, however, an earnest Scripture-reading Cephite, in the course of his reading, begins to discover that it is not all such plain sailing as he had been taught to suppose. He finds in the Scripture that the body of Christ is one, and that schism is sin. He meditates, he reads, and he prays, and the conviction deepens that things are out of joint. He looks into the different church systems, and discerns that the things that divide them are things not found in the word of God at all; that about the things really in the word there is not so much difference of opinion as about things that have no place there. He begins soon to talk a little about this with others; but he is pooh-poohed, or laughed at. Some think it is all right as it is. Others admit the wrong, but think it past remedy. None seemed disposed to meet the question by inquiring after the right, and acting on it. The man's conscience gets uneasy and troubled. The more he reads and prays the worse the thing looks to him, till at last he stumbles one day on Paul's second letter to Timothy (ii. 19), where he bids every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. He cannot doubt that it is iniquity to do what God forbids; and so he feels as though he must depart from his present associations, which are formed on what he now recognizes fully as wrong ground. But then, what is he to do? where is he to go? He has never heard of anything else; doesn't know if there be any of the original churches still standing firm, or if all have gone the same way. He is sorely puzzled and perplexed. The Lord's day morning comes, and he has to decide whether he can go again to the place against which his conscience has at last decidedly pronounced. He feels he cannot, and so remains quietly in his own chamber, alone with God and the word (Acts 20:3232And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)).
Next morning as he walks in the street, he meets a Paulite with, whom he has had some previous acquaintance but has not seen for some time. Knowing him as a godly, Christ-loving man, though of another, denomination, he greets and stops for a word with him. He broaches with some hesitation the subject that has brought on him so many hard words from those of his own sect, and to his surprise is met with a hearty response. He finds that his friend has been passing through similar exercises to his own, and, like him, had absented himself on the previous day from his accustomed place, and had spent the time alone in the summer-house of his garden. The question arises: Is there any reason why they should not meet next Lord's day, and remember the Lord 'together according to the simplicity of the word? They know no reason, and it is agreed on. Before another Lord's day comes, each has found another friend in similar case, so that four of them are gathered that morning simply to the name of the Lord; and having laid aside all that pertained to their respective sects, they looked to the Lord for guidance through the word, and find it. They have got on to God's ground. The Spirit has led them thither through the word.
When this is known, a terrible hubbub is raised; they are rated as self-righteous, as presumptuous, as schismatics, as formers of another sect, as despisers of God's order, and what not. Still their stand has led some to reflect and to search the Scriptures, and by and by one and another own that they are right-that they are following the written word without addition or subtraction, and so are on the ground which they now recognize as that on which the Scriptures show the church to have been originally set. From four they have grown to about twenty persons.
Let us now suppose the apostle Paul, in his journeyings, to have reached at last this island of the sea, and to find himself one Lord's day morning in the town where these things have been happening. Where will he go this morning? Will he go to the assemblies he condemned in Corinth? Will difference of locality make a difference of principle for the apostle of Jesus Christ? Not at all. He would have inquired, and on learning that there were assemblies of the sects there would have turned away with a heavy heart. When first mention was made of "another new sect " that had come out from among the rest, he might have feared that it was only some aggravation of the fleshly evil; but as the particulars of their action were recounted to him, his eye would have brightened, and rising, he would have said: " I must see these people;" and on seeing them, and finding that in great feebleness, and with much failure, they were seeking out the old paths, and treading in them, he would have rejoiced to own them, insignificant in numbers though they might be, as the only true representatives of the assembly of God in that place.
If he had found them tolerating known evils among them however, such as God had made ground of excision, he would assuredly not have so owned them; but though he might have found much failure—want of harmony, jealousy, and envy, and discord, or the like, while he would have spoken loudly against such things, and labored and prayed for their extinction, I feel assured he would not have made them a reason for preferring one of the schismatical sects, even if he could have found among them one entirely free from the evils complained of as existing among those on God's ground. Do you think he would? Do you think he could have acted otherwise than I have supposed, owning as God's church that which had returned to God's ground, and disowning all that was off it?
Let the name of the island be your State, the name of the town—, the epoch the nineteenth instead of the first century; and suppose that instead of the apostle Paul it were—who had to make the selection, what would he do?
I leave it with her before the Lord.
Your affectionate brother, R. H.
[Concluded.]