KIND WORDS OF REMONSTRANCE WITH SECTARIANISTS

What is the other side of the question? It has another side and fair-minded people will welcome its evidence.

Let us emphatically say that we do not condemn organized sectarian churches (or others) en toto. We recognize all of them as fellowshipping many of the best people of God. We are not saying they should not be organized. But we do say that all church organizations are fallible and have much in them that is of human origin at the best, and no matter what the auspices under Which they are launched, and however clear the divine leading seemed to be, yet the human element of frailty is in them all in their inception and through their progress.

This fact alone calls for sympathy from each, to the other's defects. We should view always what we think are defects in others, without contempt. If God must tolerate defects in one church, He may as consistently tolerate them in another. They are deplorable in any.

One strong argument used by those who would have all leave the older church and join some one of the many smaller churches, is that the Scriptures tell us to "Come out and be separate," and it is argued that unless we do, we become partakers of the sins of the churches. But does not this argument prove too much? Does it not, on the same ground, call all of us out of all church organizations and governments too? Are we not, by our own argument, a partaker of the corruption in the smaller churches? The good, clean people if the smaller churches are not responsible for the sin in them. Neither are the good, clean people of the larger churches responsible for the sin in them.

"But," says one, "there is more of it in the larger church organizations than in the lesser ones." This is because they are numerically stronger. Let the weaker churches suddenly spring into great numerical strength;, and the present inconsistencies would doubtless be proportionately greater.

I am not responsible for the whiskey traffic and other crimes which occur in the United States, though I pay taxes to the United Government. Yet, I would not abet nor aid in any direct way, the sins of the government. Jesus encouraged the paying of taxes to Caesar; in fact, performed a miracle to pay his own and Peter's taxes, and taught men to render to Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He also commended the poor widow for casting her mite into the treasury of God; though the Jewish synagogue was not without its corrupting leaven. Paul wrote -- "I wrote you in an epistle not to company with fornicators. Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolators; for then must ye needs go out of the world."

Christ's commendation would seemingly justify paying taxes to the state, and bringing offerings to the house of God, even though both might harbor much that is perverted. This practice is strongly condemned by strong Sectarianists. Yet funds put in strictly holiness churches are oftentimes productive of very little results, too.

To continue Paul's quotation: "But now I have written unto you not to keep company if any man be called a brother and be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner."

Jesus said that his disciples were "in the world but not of it." On the same ground it logically follows that they may be "in the church but not of it," as far as partaking of its evils is concerned. (Speaking, let it be remembered in terms of church organization, not of the church as on organism, the Body and Bride of Christ). The church manifestly was not, and is not as the evil world, which Jesus said they could remain in and not be of. He does not mean that they were to partake of, or fellowship evil, though He allows them to be in an evil world and formal church. If, in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him, then surely the same argument is applicable to everyone working righteousness in every denomination. The denominations are in the nations.

A strong objection to spiritual people remaining in larger churches is that their leadership is wrong; but there is enough corruption among leaders of smaller churches too, and while that of the larger is of the spirit, the other, more frequently, are overcome by sins of the flesh. When the prophecy of Daniel about the many among the leaders falling, is being fulfilled among all, those who are preserved should not, like Peter, boast, "I never will deny, thee, Lord," but pray, "Grant I never may."

I am not to blame, for worldly, secrecy fellowshipping, compromising preachers, but I am responsible not to compromise myself.

The condition of fellowship is not contingent on membership in any one evangelical church above another, but on walking in the light as He is in the light, and everyone who walks in the light of God, irrespective of his denominational affiliation, has fellowship with every other one who walks in the light, regardless of his church relationship. Fellowship is effortless, we do not try to have it, we do have fellowship with all, everywhere, who walk in His light. The condition of fellowship is, thus, not contingent on joining any organization, but on walking like Someone!

Take the example of Jesus. He early affiliated Himself with the Jewish synagogue and never left it formally, though it was fully as formal and corrupt as any modern evangelical church. Take the prophets: God kept them amidst the sin and dearth of the people of their time, to cry aloud against their sin. This they could not have done by deserting them.

The pessimistic attitude which cries that the our church is dead, spiritually, etc., cuts off much effort to obey the command to pluck brands from the burning, and doing some real, heroic rescue work, though the byways and:hedges are still numerous, where we can go and compel sinners to come in.

This pessimistic attitude also cuts off much prayer and work for their salvation and deserts those (many of whom are caused to err 5y their leaders) whom God would save.

To consign all to hell in other folds, who follow not with us (which is frequently done in some centers) is to admit that we were under condemnation and exposed to damnation ourselves when we were in them. If we are soured and prejudiced toward others without our fold, we cannot obey the command to deliver those who are drawn out to death in other folds, so far as lies in our power.

This unChristlike attitude presents the amazing picture of loathing the mother who bore us. It is very bad form to tell tales on the mother who gave us birth. The heart should be filled with pity because there are family troubles. If she is sick and ready to die, there is need of the greater sympathy.

A strong objection to spiritual people remaining in the larger churches is that the leadership of these churches is unspiritual. That may be conceded to be too frequently true; but the objection proves too much as the leadership of the smaller churches is not always what it should be; and while that the of larger churches is frequently sin of the spirit of the others it is more often the sin of the flesh: neither has room for the criticism of the other for Paul exhorts to cleansing from all the filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit: as both are wrong both should get right with God and each other and remove the soul stumbling block from the world. The destructive critic and the adulterer shall both have their place in the lake of fire.

Our little girl was ill; she was very low; the more ill she got, the more earnestly wife and I prayed. The church is very sick. Pray the more earnestly for her recovery. "But," says one, "she never will recover; she is too fare gone." This may be relatively true, still many in her may be reached by a Christ-like course. (We think of one, among many, who won hundreds for God and is now a flaming missionary). But, then, it may be said there is as much hope of winning formal church members, as Pharisaical people.

The tolerance of the exclusive, small church devotee, will be enlarged, if he takes an inventory of all those within his fold who were born again and raised as lambs in other folds, and received by him without birth agonies. He should especially remember the Apostle Paul's attitude: "Not boasting of things without our measure, that is of other men's labor, but having hope when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly (which rule is) to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to our hand."

It seems the apostle would as soon take the material out of another man's house to build his own, as to steal the fruit of another man's labor to build up his own reputation as a church organizer. Hence, to avoid this contingency, Paul labored where others had not.

Again, Jesus said, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." Now see the Divine interest in those outside of His fold (the Jewish fold) -- "them also I must bring." The command to "go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel," in its exclusiveness, is thus enlarged. Those in other folds (the Gentiles) are evidently on the Saviour's heart. He is interested in them. They are to be subjects of His atoning grace. Where did God find the reader? May He not find others there? The Jews wanted to limit God to themselves but Jesus said His Father's house was a house of prayer for all nations and not the Jewish nation only. He was not the light of Judea but of the world. Neither is He the light only of our little denominational world.

What a spectacle some churches present to intelligent eyes! They got three-fourths or more, of the membership they now possess, from the various mother churches, -- but -- Amazing! -- they now turn around and consign her to Hell, yet she gave the material out of which their churches are constructed. Be patient, she may yet give more children. Is this forgetting, this ingratitude, a manifestation of Perfect Love?

Jesus rebuked the Jews because they did not see that His Father's House was a House of Prayer for all Nations (including denominations). They wanted to limit it to a House of Prayer for the Jewish nation. How narrow! The larger interests of Christ's kingdom transcend the interests of any one branch of it.

The Spirit is calling for unity among all lovers of Jesus; heart unity, organic unity -- not mere outward unity -- the Church which is His Body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, in which all have been baptized into One Spirit, -- the Body of which He is the Head.

We know of entire churches being organized out of the fruit of the labors of some faithful evangelist, who felt God had called him to remain in some one of the old churches. Yet this same church calls his type of evangelism, spurious and popular. What type is it which gets no one into the Kingdom?

Jesus ate and mingled with publicans and sinners, not to justify their sin, but to do a work of regeneration. Might not others mingle with church people with the same motive, i.e., to bring to them the message of the regenerating power of Jesus Christ? We send missionaries to the heathen, should we not show a missionary spirit to the lost ones in the church organization? Is not the rebuke God gave to Peter after he had been sanctified by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, sadly needed? Peter would not associate with the unclean, as he thought in his narrowness that Cornelius was, being a Gentile, yet God had received him. "What God has cleansed, call thou not common or unclean." Are we not in great danger of repeating Peter's mistake? After Peter was cured, he humbly testified: "I perceive in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him."

Again, take the example of Jesus. He transcended the sectarian narrowness of His environment and reached out beyond the Jews, in a world-wide provisional love to all mankind. Can it ever be like Him to limit our love to our own little church? The Jews despised the Samaritans; had no dealings with them. Jesus ministered to them salvation at the expense of losing favor with the Jews.

Take the apostle Paul's example of tolerance. "They of the circumcision have been a comfort to me." Paul working with those of the circumcision as co-workers, and both possessing such measure of Divine love as mutually to comfort each other. Sectarian party lines were entirely obliterated. Think of Ananias fearing to fellowship Paul whom God had received! A walk with God down Straight Street, fixed him up all right. He then said, "Brother Saul."

It may be hard for some of us to follow Messenger's example of the Burning Bush and confess that we have been wrong, uncharitable and unChristlike in our attitude to other children of God, but repentance is the Bible remedy for this sin, like all other sins.

Then reflect. The extreme sectarian attitude assumes to be the infallible church, which is impossible when it is composed of fallible men. We censor others. Who will censor the censors?

Again it is objected, "But we are not as corrupt as larger churches." Again you have not thought. You have twenty or thirty thousand members and the others have thirty million. Again, you are blinded by limited opportunities to observe the defects of your own church at large.

There have been many cases of gross sin in all churches. The heart sinks as we recall them all. Are the innocent responsible? If frailties, foibles, infirmities and sins are found in the smaller church, why marvel that churches, which are larger, have similar defects?

We are justifying wrong in neither; simply affirming that it is as liable to occur in one as in the other. The tares, the Saviour said, would grow with the wheat till the end. None but He is competent to separate them.

Said an Editor of a strongly sectarian paper, after telling of what a certain number of M. E. preachers did, "This is a sample of what you swallow when you go into, and remain in, the old church." Very well, it is just as fair to say, "You swallow the sensuality and avarice of the smaller churches by your membership in them."

Those who observe closely know many professors who are like the Pharisees, they say and do not; rob God of tithes and offerings. They frequently will not speak to their loved ones, are sour, stubborn, self-willed, denunciatory, prejudiced, unforgiving and ugly in tone, temper, manner and look, and through it all, their own children are set against God, and well-nigh unreachable by the gospel.

This is a sample of what you swallow according to the inevitable conclusions of your own logic, when you join the smaller church. Away with such fallacious reasoning. "Every man shall give an account of himself to God."

We are not supporting the pride, secrecy or worldliness, so prevalent in many older churches, but we are saying it is not any more reasonable to make the good, pure, clean conscientious Christ-like members of these folds responsible for these conditions, than it is to say a good holiness brother is responsible for the inconsistencies which creep in the holiness churches.

Are the clean citizens of the American government to blame for the whiskey or white-slave traffic? Nay, to aver this is folly. Likewise, pure Christians are not to blame for the tares with the wheat; provided they do all in their power to correct said conditions in government and church. Christ was patient enough to let them alone till the judgment day. He did not even discipline Judas. Yet he knew what was in his heart. Should the other disciples have left Jesus because Judas was a traitor? Were they to blame for Judas? They did not tell Jesus that they would leave if He did not put Judas out. Were they partakers of Judas' sin in any sense? Are clean children responsible for wayward parents or vice versa?

It is not necessary to enumerate, but those who have widely traveled and closely observed, know of revolting conditions in all church organizations, which hinder the extension of Christ's kingdom.

It is customary for stagnant, dead, powerless. smaller churches to justify their own lack of power, by attributing the success of others outside of their fold, to a popular and spurious type of Evangelism. We wonder how the soul can contract to such a degree that it readily believes that God has only really won, of all the sixteen hundred million people of the Universe, the twenty to fifty thousand of their fold, and that He confines His love and operations of grace, exclusively to them! Nay, beloved, if we are only humble and teachable enough, God will yet undeceive our heart and open our eyes to see in the various churches, many tens of thousand who have not bowed their knee to Baal.

The practice and spirit of excluding all from God's grace who do not come our way, is the method of the Infallible Church of Rome!

Oh, while there is time let us repent and seek the Spirit of Christ, without which we are none of His. Jesus' spirit rejoiced in faith and character wherever and in whomsoever found! He commended the Centurion for having greater faith than any of His own.

The missionary goes to Africa, not to partake of its sin and heathen darkness, but to give light to benighted souls. "In the world among whom ye shine as lights."

May we not be missionaries to the worldly church, darkened by sin, and shine there as lights as consistently as in heathen darkness?

Is not light to shine in a dark place? "Come ye out and be separate" is very familiar to us; "Take them not out of the world but keep them from the evil," is not so familiar.

Fellowship is conditioned, not on membership in any one of the scores of church organizations, holiness or otherwise, but on walking in the light. Is it not wrong to make change of church relationship the condition? Did Jesus ever intimate such teaching?

All church organizations may say, "We are it." Whom are we to believe? There are numerous smaller churches crying "Lo here," "Lo there." "We are the true way." Jesus said, "Believe them not." "I am the way."

Are we not in danger of erring grievously by singling out a few issues, such as secrecy and pride (personally we do not approve of either) as though there were no other grievous sins? But are there not other grave matters? For example, Covetousness is idolatry, and the covetous man, so Paul says, has no part in the kingdom of Christ and God?

But I do not want to fellowship secrecy, says the radical holiness man. Well, with the same logic, why fellowship covetousness? It is as sure to damn the soul as secrecy or pride, for it is certain that there are thousands of covetousness, God-robbing holiness professors in the various holiness churches and movements. We have the facts.

Jesus said to His disciples. Take them not out of the world but keep them from: the evil (the evil one-the Anti-Christ), could not His power also keep them from the evil of the sins in the professing church?

Some one objects, "Why not, then, join Mormonism, Catholicism, Christian Science or the Lodge?" Nay, these are Anti-Christ and unChristian and unevangelical.

That a man cannot be a Christian and belong to one of the various evangelical churches is not only, as proven above, contrary to the Scriptures, but it is contrary to the example of history also. John Wesley and John Fletcher were both members of the Protestant Episcopal Church and so remained till their remarkable death-bed scenes. This is an honest time. If they are lost for serving God in the formal church of England, it will now be manifest in their dying testimonials. "The best of all, God is with us," said Wesley. "Love, love, God's love," were the saintly Fletcher's words. Keen's words (of the M. E. Church) were, "How unspeakably precious Jesus has been. I have just discovered that this full salvation is fuller than I believed."

Cookman of the same church, kept saying to the different loved ones about his bed, "Remember my testimony, I am washed in the blood of the Lamb," and then at last he cried, "I am sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb."

Again, running off, miffed at every little opposition, simply proves that we have not that love which suffers long, is patient and kind and never fails. When the opportunity comes to prove that we are letting patience have her perfect work, this method, forthwith, lets impatience have her imperfect work.

Again, Jesus' example is against this position. He kept going into the synagogue everywhere -- "as His custom was!" He called the Jewish temple the "Temple of God" -- "My Father's House," and it was. He went into it, not to criticize it, but to cleanse and to drive out that which perverted it.

Again, history proves that all great revivalists, as Wesley, Fletcher, Finney, Redfield, Caughey, Evan Roberts, had their most powerful revivals in the various old churches. Again it is suggestive that God has never used any of the exclusive churches as leaders of great, sweeping revivals. Jesus did not give His church any particular name (He did speak of it as His Body -- His Bride, however). He was particular to stamp men with holy character. That is all that will stand the test of time and eternity.

Is it consistent to condemn the worldling to hell for the insurance he carries in his Lodge, and then insure our lives in old-line companies? Is it consistent to parade the faults of churches and colleges and cover up the sins in our own?

Why not publish them also to the world? Would that not be fair? Personally, we want neither.

A final objection is that they backslide in the cold, formal churches. The same can be said of the smaller churches. At least three-fourths of the seekers in revivals are "repeaters."