What do we want recognition of any sects for? What do we want to come
on a level with them for? Not one of them has a creed that is indorsed
by any party but his own. There is not a party in Christendom that
receives or believes the Methodist creed except the Methodist party.
The same is true of every other party. Their creeds are not even
popular, only as they agree in the _human-creed_ idea _that they must
have a human creed_. What a coming down, for a man that has a creed
that they all believe—the Bible—to come down on a level with a man,
standing on a little _side platform_, discarded by every religious
party, in the world, except his own. We do not want his recognition and
do not intend to recognize him till he abandons his _side platform_.
The Evangelical Alliance have been trying, twenty-five years or more,
to make a platform and are as far from making one that these parties
can stand on as they were at the beginning. What use have we for
tampering in this way? We have a creed that every party in Christendom
admits to be right. The Bible is that creed. We have a doctrine that
they all admit to be right—“all Scripture given by inspiration of
God,” as Paul says, “is profitable for _doctrine_.” There is no doubt
about it. We have “the faith once for all delivered to the saints”—the
belief “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” and not a
party among all the contending parties doubt or denies this faith. The
doubts are not about what we hold, but about what these others hold.
We hold and practice no doubtful baptism. The burial of a penitent
believer in baptism is valid baptism with all the parties of any note.
We can take down the books from their own libraries and show from
their standard works that all we hold, teach and practice, is found
in their main works, indorsed and sanctioned in numerous ways. We are
not standing upon any doubtful ground. We know we are right, and what
remains for us to do is to make every possible effort to attain to a
more perfect practice of what we know to be right, and not be trying
to get recognition from any of these modern parties. They will never
indorse us till we abandon our ground, and this, many among us will
never do.