It is a matter of common knowledge that evangelical Christians are not driven further apart but are really driven together whenever Christianity itself is placed under any special trial, as, for example, in foreign missionary work in heathen lands.  And even in our own country, whenever a great local interest is taken in the work of soul-saving there is a corresponding tendency for Christians of different sects to ignore their differences of opinion and get together as if they believed in a common Lord over all and were all members of the same family.  Thus, whenever the high tide of evangelism comes in, the landmarks of sects are scarcely visible; but whenever the tide goes out, behold, the ancient boundaries of sects appear as before.  This fact proves that there are no fundamental reasons why sects should exist.  It proves that in reality sects are a barrier to the true work of Christ; hence are, in their essential nature, antichristian.  What, then, is the real cause of sects’?

Traced to the original source, modern sects, we find, originated where the papacy originated—­in the corruption of Christianity in the early centuries.  All came from the same roots of error.

[Sidenote:  True causes of sects]

However modified and diversified in external form and in doctrinal teaching they may now be, they exhibit in their ecclesiastical constitutions a foreign character derived from the foreign stock from which they sprang.  Into this system there have been engrafted many noble scions of truth from the “good olive-tree,” and these have produced commendable fruits of righteousness.  But we are here concerned with pointing out those fundamental characteristics of the system that are foreign to the true church of Jesus Christ.

[Sidenote:  Erroneous ideas of the church]

The first cause to which I call attention is an erroneous conception of the church itself.  At the cost of some repetition I must point out that in the beginning the church was the universal company of the redeemed, the whole spiritual brotherhood, whether isolated members of Christ or those worshiping in local assemblies distributed over the earth.  The tie which united these members of Christ in one body was their common faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and the life of the Spirit.  But as in those times vast centralized imperial power was a divinity that every one worshiped, it was impossible properly to appreciate the moral and spiritual dominion of Christ by which alone he designed to rule his church; therefore men soon proceeded to pattern the church of Christ after the political government, first by grouping together under one administrative human headship the congregations of a province or section of the empire, and then finally uniting these different provinces under one administrative headship at Rome.  From that day until the present time the church-idea that has generally prevailed in Christendom has been an organization fashioned according to the kingdoms of this world; a human organization in which the administrative functions of government are centralized under some form of human headship; a unity that is not moral and spiritual, but official and administrative, as well as legislative and judicial.