NEED OF REFORMATION IN THE 16TH AND THE 20TH CENTURIES

Definition: The word Theses is from the Greek word Theosis, singular; plural, theses, meaning "to place, " to set, a thing laid down, a statement, a proposition; specifically, a position or proposition which a person advances and offers to maintain.

Martin Luther wrote ninety-five Theses against the abuses of the church of his day. Were he alive today, and should he attempt to write Theses covering the perversions and abuses which have grown out of the Reformation, o.f which he was the leading human instrument, he would need greatly to multiply the original number. In his day, one great church usurped the place of Christ; now the Protestant church is divided into endless sects; separate, apart, and often antagonistic each to the other; wrangling, jangling and warring among themselves and often as unsympathetic as the Jews and Samaritans of Christ's time, who had no dealings one with the other, and this disunified state is the greatest hindrance to the work of Christ in the world; and worse yet, among the allied off-shoots of Protestantism, numerous factions who. preach and profess the highest grace -- the perfectly unifying blessing embodied in Christ's intercessory prayer, who, in some instances, have a doctrinal unity which is belied by separation in practice.

One cause of disintegration in all former Reformations was in the over-dependence upon some dominant human leader, as Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox, Wesley; also in that they gathered about some distinctive doctrine, as for example, justification, predestination, free grace or free will; the witness of the Spirit or sanctification. These distinctive words became slogans for exposition and defense; and while a merciful God overruled to much good their undue emphasis, the tendency was to obscure the Saviour, substituting conformity to doctrines for Him, inducing a subtle idolatry of supposedly infallible tenets.

Shortly before his death, Wesley cast about him to find reasons for the success of Methodism and concluded that it was because of their distinctive doctrines, their polity or form of church government, and their firm administration of discipline; whereas these were only contributary! God, the Personal God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the midst, was the great secret of their phenomenal power and growth, working with them, confirming the Word with the signs that followed.

Should God grant a mighty Reformation ere the dispensation closes, the outstanding Personality in it, transcending all others, will be none other than He whom Scripture represents as "Fairer than the sons of men;" whom God has ordained in all things to have the preeminence, leading men, through His Word and by His Spirit, not to partial views of truth, but "into all truth." "The Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, " wrote Isaiah, "to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all the honorable of earth." Prophecy records, and history confirms the law of rejection of all people failing God's purpose and the new probation of untried nations or movements. The Jews failed God and God called the Gentiles; the Roman Church fails and God raises up Lutheranism; it lags, and Wesley is called and Methodism is given probation. She fails in measure, and the National Association is formed to call her back to pristine glory and power. Keswickianism, with its different emphasis on Perfectionism is tried, the Pentecostal 5Iovement, and various independent movements, Missionary and Higher Life, spring up, one after the other, and of all of them it may be said, in greater or less degree, that -- "By and by each evangelical movement loses its free spirit and settles down into a new form of traditionalism, " zealously contending for the doctrines which, when aflame, gave them being, but now. out from which the life and power have gone: and the words of Isaiah, while primarily spoken in relation to Israel, may be applied ultimately to them all (with of course the exception ever of God's elect) -- "And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen; for the Lord shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name: that he who blesses himself in the earth, shall bless himself in the God of truth." Let us not boast that we are any kind of an "1st." The true Church is an organism -- "The Church which is His Body" -- and someone has well said, and science verifies the statement, that "when we organize the organism corruption sets in."

"The Humanists of the sixteenth century tried to bring about Reformation by sharp polemic against the hierarchy and biting mockery of the stupidity of the popular religion, but they did not help the masses of the common people." If we only expose error which is negative, we will not help the masses of the people. Without a positive vision of Jesus, the people perish.

The purpose of this work is, as far as possible, to expose the poison of error and to point to the revelation of truth, its sure antidote.

"History knows nothing of revivals of moral living apart from some new religious impulse." Erasmus, the Humanist, had, with keenest sarcasm, pictured the corruptions of the Roman Church, but he was not the prophet with the burning heavenly vision; he was like a man who tries to preach truth apart from the anointing of the Spirit, in the letter which kills and renders even truth powerless to offend; but the same truth from Luther's flaming heart, starts a Reformation, lights the fires of persecution and starts inquisition for blood!

How far have we advanced from the old Roman law which demanded proof of the sincerity and loyalty of its subjects by compelling them to offer incense to the gods? We demand, often, by a law which is unwritten, yet well understood, conformity to modern custom and tradition and shibboleth and party; we manufacture a new Christian (?) legalism and then cry for conformity to the god of our own making. When a great church organization puts on a financial program of vast proportions and makes harmony with it, en toto, the basis of recognition and promotion, virtually pronouncing woe to him who does not line up with the new god and burn incense to it, wherein does it differ from the Roman demand to sacrifice to the gods?

Conformity! "Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist, " said Emerson, "as society is everywhere a Conspiracy against the manhood of its members." But church organizations are crying -- "Fall in line with the program of the majority, " right or wrong -- "Conform to our doctrinal moulds" -- and it is a sad thing that many churches have no use for the man who will not surrender his manhood and conform. Too often unless blind obedience is given, there is proscription and restriction, hindrance and banning, blockade and pogrom, and if there is persistent refusal, ultimately there comes the cry -- "Away with him! To the lions!"

We do not need to battle against the usurpations of the Hierarchy and its encroachment on the liberty of our souls, or fight for an unchained Bible and its translation into the vernacular so that the laity may read the Word of God; or for the individual right of private judgment in arriving at the will of God and sole responsibility to God; or for the universal priesthood of believers; and we need not win the battle for pure doctrines, they have been accurately stated. Existing forms of church government can be little improved, or ritual, or form of worship. Orthodox we are to a fault. Our great need is to see the menace of a dead, dry, powerless orthodoxy which is destitute alike of fervor, fire and the power to transform lives! We are losing, or perhaps have practically lost, the power to make effective what of right doctrine we do believe! Ours is the paradox of ineffective beliefs! The power of spiritual reproduction is fast disappearing. This is a fearful omen! It is the death knell of the organized church, so that, as a friend said -- "The church is rapidly passing as an institution."

Infanticide spells, ultimately, the death of a nation, and spiritual non-production, spells the death of a denomination. Our reproach is spiritual barrenness! We are spiritually sterile and, like the daughters of old, we should go to some mountain and bitterly weep over our reproach among men. We are holding the truth in the unrighteousness of the letter which killeth! If we cannot preach the Gospel with the power of the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven, we would benefit the people by closing all of our churches until, like John, the Baptist, we can come forth from some wilderness seclusion and speak in the name of God, clothed with authority and power. No preaching at all will benefit the people more than letter preaching -- it is a positive source of death-"The letter killeth!" This is our sin, brethren, we have been content to preach without power, when, by obedient asking, in faith, God would so clothe us with power that our words would be like fire, penetrating heart and conscience, and transforming lives.

The battle of the Sixteenth Century and that of the Twentieth Century, is identical in many points: then there was the loss of the God-consciousness and the development of Church-consciousness as a substitute; then, and now, there was the program of men for guidance, rather than the Spirit of God; then, and now, the Hierarchy directed the study of young men for the ministry; to develop the thought that salvation inhered in, and was conveyed through the organized church, with the substitution of the form for the power of God. All of their efforts were directed toward getting men into the organized church and keeping them in, rather than their induction into the kingdom of heaven by the birth of the Spirit. Reverence for creed, system and human program, obscured the vision of the Saviour -- the living Saviour!

That the reverence then, and now, was sincere, avails naught, as poison taken sincerely is as fatal as when taken in ignorance. How the wily adversary has ever thrust institutions between the souls of men and fellowship with God! Jesus is the only way to God, and systems have vainly been offered to appease the hunger for fellowship with a Person. Men then, as now, contended more for the traditions of men than for the words of Jesus. The Lutheran Reformers fought for a real, rather than a pretended Justification; of faith rather than of works; of God's provision rather than of man's. The same battle is ours, only the modern methods of justification by works are far more numerous than with the Church of Rome and harder to detect. There was then, also, a pretense of holiness and sanctity which rested in external devotion to the Church. Our battle is for unselfish, ethical, New Testament Holiness, in place of the theoretical, emotional, spasmodic, Pharisaical, impractical type so prevalent in our day.

In former time there was the propagation of ancient traditionalism and legalism, with the constant addition of new laws; now we have a newly manufactured Christian (?) legalism, and traditions more subtle and difficult of detection, which bind and hinder the freedom of the soul. Then there was the establishment of the infallible (?) church and its infallible (?) head, which usurped the place of God and Christ in the thought and affections of men; now, a thousand churches, with strong Papal tendencies, and self-appointed lords over God's heritage, substitute a Protestant popery for the old popery, and exhort men to join the church, instead of pressing the need of the new birth which would make them new creatures in Christ Jesus, and give to them the glorious liberty of those whom the Son makes free!

Just recently a prophecy of approaching dire sickness as an afflictive judgment of God was made to a man, unless he would leave, by a certain day, his responsible position in the business realm (for which he was eminently fitted) arid head for the pulpit. What difference if the Pope intimidates me, or if someone who claims superior spirituality and knowledge of the ways of God, does it? Whether he shall leave his business is altogether a matter between himself and God, a matter of such moment to him that no partisan zealot can decide for him. "Every man shall give an account of himself to God." How similar are the threats of judgment pronounced by certain religious workers, and the unwarranted banning and curses of old!

James McConkey has well said: "Take God's plan, and consecration to it, to Christian men, and straightway many of them think you mean them to give up their business and head at once for the pulpit or the foreign missionary field. To come into God's life-plan is to go into some other place, as they view it.. But there never was a greater mistake. Consecration is not necessarily dislocation. Not by any means. God's plan for a man's life does not of necessity lift him out from his present realm of life and surroundings. It is not a new sphere God is seeking, but a new man in the present sphere. It is not transference but transformation! The trouble is not usually with the place; it is with the man in the place. And so when a man consecrates his life to God to find and enter into God's perfect plan for that life, God will usually keep him right where he is, but living for God and:His kingdom, instead of for self. So, until God shoats you differently, stay where you are and live for God."

A woman whose face shines like heaven, was excommunicated from a holiness church but recently, for disloyalty, not to Christ, but to the services of the Church.

We have also an antinomianism in disguise, the substitution of the Twentieth Century super-enlightened (?) conscience, which sets aside the Word of God as the only safe guide for faith and practice; and the so-called "Higher" Criticism too, each as surely endeavoring to set aside the Law of the Lord as the Roman Hierarchy ever did, with ever increasing menace to securing man's consent to Christ's Lordship.

Multiplicity Of Days And Devotion To Symbols

Rome multiplied fast days, feast days and high days, to substitute for the lost consciousness of God, but wherein is she more zealous than we who have so multiplied days in the church calendar that like Paul we exclaim-we are fallen from grace, whoever we are that observe a day, or worship a symbol or place any faith therein.

There is nothing for us in His symbolic Star, but all in Him whom it symbolized. A friend suggests -- "The wise men were wiser than we are. They said, 'We have seen His star and have come to worship HIM'." Not to worship His star! They were not mere stargazers, mere symbol-worshippers. They looked past the sign to the One whom the sign signified. Our danger is that too often we seize symbols of Christ and outstanding days in the Christian Calendar and pour out our devotion to them and thus lose Him through the symbols. We take the symbolic names without their Christlike content, hence we have meaningless symbols. We have a mania for flaunting the high sounding names which, without content, make us ludicrous before the world:-"Christian, " "Disciple, " "Nazarene, " "Church of God, " "Pentecostal, " "Apostolic, " "Holiness" and "Holiness Christian." These high-sounding, pious, sanctimonious names often become the handicap of those who arrogate to themselves fitness to be called by them. One is reminded of the little dingy basement restaurants in our Capitol, with such names as "The White House Lunch, " or "The Senate Restaurant, " in vivid contrast to some magnificent hostelry with a modest name.

It is so, often, is it not, that the greater pretention, the less content. God give us, not great names for our churches, but great content. One man told us that he was about to launch a copyrighted, sacred Church, to be named -- "The Church of the Galilean." The exclusive copyright to use and control by the signatories, would alone indicate its foreignness in nature to the original Galilean, Who, Himself, never legally incorporated the Church, "which is His Body;" rather, He labored to get the kingdom of heaven within men and to build them up in the most holy faith. Thank God, the "Galilean Church" has not been launched -- may it never be. If it were it would be but one more barrier to the heart unity of all believers.

How often our holy names and symbols are meaningless, and worse than meaningless, interpreted in the light of US who wear them! One preacher, in a Sunday morning service, as he surveyed his unChristlike congregation, wailed out of a broken heart -- "Oh, my God, are these people what I have made them? Are they the product of my kind of preaching?" The middle initial to one's name formerly stood for the middle name. We once asked a little girl what the initial "L" in her name stood for, and were amazed at her response -- "It don't stand for nothing, it is just put in for the looks. So it is, is it not, with some of our sacred symbols, seasons, days, names? They used to stand for something, but interpreted in the light of US, too often they are meaningless.

There is nothing for the soul, in the celebration merely of days; nothing in the mechanical program observance of Christmas Day. But there is everything for us in Him who was born thereon. There is nothing in Easter Day with its Cantatas and Oratorios, but there is everything heart and life need in HIM who burst the gates of death on that day. The hallowed memories which this day brings, are worth little unless He is our life. It is faith in the Hallowed One who rose from the grave on Easter Day, which insures our justification. It is easily seen that in forgetting Him whom they are supposed to honor, these days are coming to have so much place in our thought. We celebrate them in His honor while we dishonor Him by failing to exhibit their significance in daily life. Good Friday, Palm Sunday, Easter Day, Christmastide, are no more fraught with blessing to him who has enthroned Christ in the heart by faith, than any other day in the calendar. Sunday is no more sacred than Monday, per se, to the soul with the transcendent vision of the Preeminent One.

Let Rome substitute devotion to days if she will, but let true Protestants worship the Creator of all days. Just this past Easter a minister's wife said to the writer that she had been so busy training the children for an Easter Recital or Cantata that she could not attend a revival where the Lord was raising souls with Christ to newness of life.

Oh, let us stop playing Church and get back to Christ! Let us spend our energies in direct soul-saving activities and in the edification of believers. Let us not be side-tracked by secondary things! This is no rime for trifling! Thousands are alarmed at the deadness in church services and are crying to God to, send them anointed preachers of the truth. This is no time for compromise. Let us cooperate with Christ in that type of work which will not be burned by judgment fires, while we ourselves are saved by the narrowest margin and our life service spent in vain because we abounded in secondary church work rather than in the direct work of the Lord! Mother's Day, Fathers' Day, Independence Day, Decoration Day, National Days, and Days or Evenings with Poets, may all be well in their place, but a day with the Lord's gracious presence richly manifested to our hearts will be better than a thousand days, as David wrote, and will include all the possible good all the other days can contain.

One church calendar, (to indicate the trend of the times) said, "Everything must point to Easter, the greatest day of the year and the most significant in the Christian Calendar." Nay everything should point to Christ, each day alike and all the year!

We make too much of the crucifixion and not enough of the One crucified; too much of the cross and too little of Him who died thereon. We sing sentimentally about cherishing the old rugged cross, and if we have in mind only the sign and not Him who was impaled thereon, any Roman Catholic can outdo us at that. We may decorate ourselves and our churches with emblems of the cross, but the question is, how much do we know of its crucifying power -- a double crucifixion-the world crucified unto us and we unto the world?

We do not mean to write that emblems have no meaning, but we have a brief to plead the Saviour's cause as paramount to bare zeal for emblems. During the days of the Reformation, the inquisitors asked a man to cherish the crucifix. He replied that he would cherish the Christ who died on the Cross. They burned him at the stake! Do we see the difference between a sentimental, emotional, meaningless cherishing of the cross, and the acceptance of Him who died thereon, and can we say from our hearts' depths -- "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me?"

Spiritual, as well as natural senses, are dulled by routine. We have inherited Christian activities, or church activities, without Christian experiences until we think Christianity consists in outward activities more than inward being from which all right Christian activities flow. We are aping the output of the Christian life without Christ and regeneration. Applied Christianity is the least need of our day, as that may easily be counterfeited. Applied Personality -- fellowship with Christ -- is our supreme need!!

Purpose Of The Church -- Modernist Version Of The Bible

Modernists tell us that the purpose of the Church is to:

The Word of God says we are to proclaim the good news of salvation through faith in Christ's finished work.

The Word of God says we are to proclaim the good news of baptism with the Holy Spirit, without which the worship God seeks in us is in, possible.

The Word of God describes our natural state -- "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" And points to our only deliverance -- "Christ, in you, the hope of glory."

The Word of God directs to Repentance for its lack and begets true, personal morality, by spiritual re-birth.

All of which is attempted salvation by the Protestant Institution called the Church, and obscures salvation by Faith in a Person. What must I do to be saved? There is none other NAME under heaven whereby we must be saved. The Lord has many true subjects comprising His elect, in the visible institution called the church, but they are not His primarily because they are in the Church, but because the Head of the true Church is in them!

Prior to the Reformation, large cities usurped primacy over the smaller ones and the pastors of their churches usurped lordship over the pastors of the smaller city churches. Is this same spirit not now with us in all branches of Protestantism? The man from the First Church is given deference and preference not accorded the poor circuit rider. Instead of One, even Christ, the common Master of all, and all brethren in Him, there was then, and is now, the sinful respect of persons which ignores the brotherly covenant. Instead of being ensamples to the flock, ambitious men, anxious for leadership, lord it over God's heritage.

Then the Bible also, instead of being the only source of spiritual truth, was regarded as only one source. It is the same in this Twentieth Century, when so-called enlightened conscience is placed on a par with the Word of God, and ofttimes exalted above it. ^[1] There was merit, they claimed, in the blood of Christ, but also merit in the blood of others. How this brings to mind what men have recently spoken from platform and pulpit that the shedding of the soldier's blood for his country, squared his account with God (even tho he died with an oath on his lips) and that the shed blood of the soldiers in the world war, in the aggregate, was necessary to help purify the world. How blasphemous to put on an equality, the blood of unregenerate man, "dead in trespasses and sin, " with the blood of God's only begotten Son, "who knew no sin, " but who was "made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Wondrous grace! Marvelous condescension!!

No company of ecclesiastics, ancient or modern, have the right to impose a course of study on a man whom God has called to preach which hinders him from pursuing the course of study which God has chosen for him. "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth." Not, study the subtleties of the school-men or the destructive critics, the modernists or the teachers of Darwinism. No body of men have the right to choose what the man called of God shall preach; he must preach the message God bids him and he is under no obligation to side-track the Gospel for the suggestions of any modern Papal throne, masquerading under the guise of Church Headquarters. Is there not here a relation to the custom of Rome, which interprets the Bible for its young men, when we choose and force upon our young men a course of study with which God has nothing to do? Is not the anointing which we have received of Him essentially our Teacher? "When He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth." Have Protestant Popes any more right to usurp the Spirit's place as Teacher, Guide and Illuminator, than the Roman? Do we not need again to sound the note of the Sixteenth Century Reformers that the souls of all men are amenable to God only and that no one has the right to bind a single thing upon them which God Himself does not indicate? In all of these remarks, we would not discountenance the gift of teaching, nor fail duly to appreciate the light on the "Word of God which Spirit-filled teachers have been permitted, by His grace, to shed.

Papal Tendencies Everywhere

We were struck with the prayer (which may at first, appeal to our sense of humor) of an earnest soul who was lamenting the spiritual barrenness of Protestantism -- "O, Lord, we have nothing to say against the form of others, we have too much form of our own; we have no complaint to make against the Roman Pope, we have too many popes of our own; too many Protestant popes; too many independent popes; to many church bosses in all branches of Protestantism."

A new church recently organized, tells its devotees in its official communique, organ of the new Hierarchy, that no matter where they are located in the wide world it is their duty to send their tithes to the Mother Church! Whence this arrogance and Papal assumption? Why this craze to organize and own? Why not be content to feed the Master's sheep, the FLOCK OF GOD, not the flock of the Mother Church. Here is the echo of Catholicism and Eddyism. They are assuming prerogatives over the Lord's heritage for which there is no warrant in the Word of God. Cannot God be trusted to lead His own into all truth and to direct the disbursement of the offerings where He will? We fear that often the love for the fleece is mistaken for love for the sheep and when the fleece is cut off, too frequently the care of the sheep ceases because they were not loved purely for Christ's sake. How does this spirit differ from that in others who make no claim to piety? Lodgemen, Mormons, Socialists, Anarchists, Reds, Bolshevists and every other party extant pay tribute to Headquarters to get as much again. And does not their interest cease too when the member ceases to pay tribute?

Another requires a solemn vow of those joining his new Hierarchy that they shall always give a sacred preference to the services of his Church. This is an assumption of superiority or downright selfishness, both foreign to the Spirit of Christ. What fallible man has the right to bind the conscience of his fellows? Their right to receive his vow is as great. What if one, as often is the case, is more able to steal and to corral, to coop and pen, to shear and brand or label sheep, than he is qualified to feed them the well-balanced ration they must have in order to thrive? A sheep corral with a high fence to keep others out who. will not receive the brand and to hold those entrapped therein lest they wander to other corrals, may bear a high-sounding, sacred name, but it is not the same as a hay-rick filled with tender, succulent, alfalfa or clover! Bees need take no vow to go to the flowers which harbor the sweetest nectar, nor sheep to the pastures where there are the most tender shoots of grass. Even so, the Lord's sheep will. by instinct, find the best pasture.

What if Christ should come to town? The solemn covenant has been irrevocably taken and may not be broken under penalty, not of Papal excommunication and cursing, but of Protestant or Holiness or Alliance or Pentecostal banning and boycott and anathema and accusations of apostasy -- of not going on with God because of not following them. The lofty Church name and promise of vast superiority does not assure a bill of fare of the finest of the wheat; or of the pure beaten oil of the Word; or the old corn of the land. Anecdotes, narratives (sometimes manufactured out of whole cloth) stock expressions, illustrations frazzled with use and nauseatingly familiar, flat, stereotyped expressions, religious shibboleths, cliches of the new party, stale, familiar platitudes, soon become obnoxious. The hollowness too, of plagiarized sermons, soon demonstrates the fact that the changed label has not broken the old bondage, either for leader or duped followers.

No man is under any obligation to follow any man or men, church, party or movement only as they follow the Pattern given us on the Holy Mount, which is Christ. And no one is under any obligation, no matter under what auspices the vow was taken, to go forever anywhere because of a blind vow imposed by someone who had as much need to submit to vows as to administer them. All men in Christ Jesus are free to go to worship where the Holy Spirit within them impels, and they are amenable to no fellow mortal for so doing. They are obligated of God to go where they receive most spiritual food and where they can do the most good to their fellowmen. Some will be up in arms and cry -- "Come-outism! Anarchism! Bolshevism! But let all who claim the call to preach demonstrate it by ministering the Word of God in the power and demonstration of the Spirit and they need not be alarmed lest they have no one to whom to preach. But with what little grace can any group who itself bore the name "Come-outer, " hurl this derision at others? As to the sacredness of the vow, all false vows should be broken. The error is not in breaking from them but it was in making them in the first place.

In olden times the priest had to maintain the system, right or wrong. We need heed lest we imitate him and support other systems, right or wrong, and thus fail to demonstrate a prominent principle of Protestantism. To give or conform to systems without manly protest at wrong in them, with the motive to gain from them as much -- do not publicans and sinners do the same? An undue devotion to any system which usurps the place of God in our thoughts and affections, is bowing to an idol as literally as does the heathen. God is calling for men, not mere priests and preachers and blind conformists to the established order! God save all preachers from being mere preachers and not men! It takes real, consecrated manhood to be a true preacher of the Word. It is no child's play.

We may have the despicable, groveling spirit in any of the Protestant Churches, or so-called independent churches, as did the poor:bond slaves of the Hierarchy of Luther's time, working the soft pedal on conviction, fawning and flattering and "having men's persons in admiration because of advantage, " seeking to please men. rather than God, nursing our reputations, working our way in with the Committee, pulling the wires for a return call, aping those we condemn in Conference wire-pulling. The need now is as imperative, to break for liberty in Christ from all tendencies to bondage, as it was in Luther's or Wesley's time, and greater "as we see the day approaching."

The Catholic leaders instilled in the minds of the youth preparing for the priesthood, the absolute supremacy of the church. While the analogy does not hold between it and many of our Protestant churches, there are dangerous tendencies evident. It matters little if one be under the spell of an ancient error or a modern one with a new label on the old principle of bondage. The writer, with eight earnest intercessors, labored for four hours in intense intercessory prayer for the breaking on the deceptive spell a Lutheran preacher had cast over a young man, deceiving him into the belief that Catechism, Confirmation, Communion and Lutheran church-joining were the same as the birth of the Spirit from heaven. Our Methodist, Presbyterian, and other churches are receiving members too, without the birth of the Spirit. There will be a fearful accounting day for some pastors!

All the other churches outside the church of Rome may be as orthodox as the Pharisee, and as powerless. A spiritually dead Papal system is no more a menace to the soul's salvation by faith than a dead Protestant orthodoxy out of which all spiritual power has gone. Death, in the darkness of wrong views, is no less deplorable than the death touch on our right views; holding the truth in unrighteousness is as dangerous as error. There is no more life in the Protestant "letter" than in the Roman. When new forms replace the old forms without power, they hinder the way to the kingdom of God as much as do the old forms. We may have a Protestant, Lutheran, Holiness, Alliance, Independent and Pentecostal form of godliness, without the power thereof, as the church of Rome, to repudiate whose powerlessness, we have the name "Protestant."

We need a new Protestantism which will protest against a Protestantism which does not protest at its own inertia, its own death, its form and its powerless ritual.

New Testament prophecy states that the time will come, when they, who have the form of godliness, will not endure sound doctrine. Good Bishop Warren said sixteen years ago -- "Brethren, that time has come!" I think one patent reason for this is that men do not perpetuate their consecration. Take an illustration from the monetary standpoint of consecration: many thousands, fifty years ago, made a full surrender and were filled with the Holy Ghost, when, in those pioneer days, they had little, materially, to consecrate. The Government gave them land valued at $1.25 per acre, which has since enhanced in value until it is worth $1, 000.00 per acre, in numerous instances, and in others, where cities have been built on it, much more. This has made them wealthy in thousands of instances, and they have not kept their consecration apace with their increased prosperity, and the Spirit has been grieved. Yet they will pray -- "Lord, bless us as Thou didst fifty years ago." He would gladly do so, but He cannot give a thousand dollar-per-acre-valuation blessing on the old dollar and a quarter per acre consecration, of fifty years ago!

The writer knows two men (of many others) worth a million dollars who, from simple, equitable statements like the above, were unable to sleep all night and left the Camp-Ground; and six men who went blustering from the tabernacle because the preacher said that the holiness standard of the New Testament could not be maintained by holding one-ten-day Camp Meeting each year -- but that it touched the heart, life, and purse, all the year round, or not at all.

There has been an unwarranted generosity on the part of the holiness people in giving wholesale, the passage we are considering on the non-endurance of sound doctrine, to what they term nominal churches. These are doubtless involved in the guilt, but rather is the passage directed to the professors of godliness (holiness).-"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine" -- Who will not endure sound doctrine? -- Those who "having a form of godliness deny the power thereof." They "heap to themselves teachers having itching ears" and woe be to the man who dares train the gun on the reality of the situation!

When movements which started in power, concrete into new form, they become persecutors of the men and the rejectors of the preaching which begat them.

History proves that all religious movements, ere long, settle down into a new form of traditionalism; they seek to bind men to their new forms and names. New leaders arise, who know not Joseph, and take the reigns of government, men who are not in sympathy with the vision and need and sacrifice which gave them being, and look upon them rather as so many livings, the best of which are to be coveted and nursed, as channels of self-aggrandizement; as an arena for the exaltation of self; as a sphere in which an easy living is to be made; choosing them as spheres of professional ministry, just as the lawyer might choose law, or the doctor medicine; and hence, where there is no vision of the real purpose of the church and ministry, the people perish. They preach the new cliche and conform to the new system, with the result that individuality and independence of thought and Christian liberty are at an end. The fear of a pensionless old age may enter into the consideration of a time-serving ministry, and like the man who hopes for the pension by and by in the great business organization, they study not to offend. The writer heartily believes that God will sustain and support "e'en down to old age', " all who preach the Gospel of God in the power of the Spirit.

Confusion, Babel, are fitting words to describe the religious situation today. A man who is devoted to setting folks right religiously, condemns all higher critics in one breath, with their denial of the supernatural, and in the next breath he denounces the pure manifestation of God's Power in healing the body. The Methodist Episcopal Church, unfriendly to its most distinctive doctrine -- "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord"-welcomes the Pentecostal people, who, in turn, have no particular love for the "Holiness" people, and they, themselves, are roundly condemned by the holiness people as being heretical, fanatical, and altogether of the devil.

There is no sect extant, nor any creedal statement, nor is it in the power of any one to invent them, on which all can get together in unity. A council could deliberate forever to formulate grounds of union and all their schemes of union would be utterly futile but the instant we all sit at the feet of Jesus and receive the baptism of His Spirit into One Body, there is an indescribable, incomprehensible, perfect unity, and though from every race, color, clime, nation and denomination, we are one in Christ and members one of another. Ah, He is the panacea for all our discord and division for "He is our peace." He is the Great UNIFIER! "One is your Master and ALL YE ARE BRETHREN"!!  

1 See the Author's book -- "Conscience Not a Safe Guide."