it a monstrosity, when they shamelessly tried to abandon it on the steps of missionary societies and conventions.
Some debate is still on in these meetings about adopting it.
The advocates of this plan would evade criticism for lowering New Testament standards of church membership by not organizing local congregations, substituting committees for a Scriptural eldership and diaconate, giving practically full recognition to all professed Christians, camouflaging the real situation by giving a new content to such words as "membership" and "fellowship," doubtless hoping to secure sanction for an unscriptural union, in the resultant confusion.
One could refer to this departure with less heat if the Jesuitical processes responsible for its inception were not so evident.
Just now the defense in this matter seems to be that they have not done anything, but they will not do it again so long as they are matched.
Having briefly surveyed a few of the more annoying human efforts to effect a union based on the organizational conception of the church, let us again study the Scripture on the subject from a different angle of vision to learn just what Jesus desired to be one. What was the unit of which His ideal unity was to be composed? We begin with Jesus' own teaching. In John 17: 20-23, He prays:
"Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even on thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto
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