What, then, was the apostle’s method of curing schism, and of making men truly one who had been “divided?”

He directed every eye, and every heart, and every spirit, to one object—­JESUS CHRIST, the personal Saviour, the centre and source of unity; in fellowship with whom all men would find their fellowship with each other.

“We preach Christ crucified.”  “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”  “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  These are his declarations.  And his conclusion from this great and blessed principle is just what we might expect:  “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”  “Let no man glory in men:  for all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come:  all are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

Professing Christians would do well to weigh the apostle’s cure of schism.  Our divisions of heart and alienation of spirit are unworthy of educated men, and of the citizens of a free state, while they are in spirit utterly subversive of the whole principles of Protestantism.  What! not able to hear the gospel preached from the lips of a minister of another church, nor to remember Jesus with him or his people?  Not willing even to be on kind, or perhaps on speaking terms with a brother minister?  Such things not only have been, but are; and while, thank God, they are repudiated and detested by men of all Churches, they are common, we fear, among too many.  No wonder Roman Catholics point at our frequent boasting of Protestant “oneness in all essentials,” and ask with triumph, how it happens, then, that we are such enemies on mere non-essentials?  How it is that we pretend to be one when attacking Papists, and then turn our backs on each other when left alone?  No wonder the High Churchman of England asks the Presbyterians in Scotland to forgive him if he never enters our Presbyterian churches, hears our clergy, partakes of our sacraments, when so very many among ourselves practically excommunicate each other.  No wonder the infidel lecturer describes to crowds of intelligent mechanics, in vivid and powerful language, the spectacle presented by many among our Christian clergy and people, and asks, with a smile of derision, If ithis is a religion of love which they see around them—­if these men believe the gospel—­and if Christians have really more kindness and courtesy than “publicans and sinners?” Worse than all, no wonder our churches languish, and men are asking with pain, why the ministry is not producing more true spiritual fruit, which is love to God and man?  The Churches are, no doubt, doing much.  We have meetings, associations, and organisations, with no end of committees, resolutions, and motions; we raise large sums of money; we have large congregations;—­yet all this, and much more, we can do from pride, vanity, love