For fifty years, we, as christians, have stood on the Bible alone,
as a rule of faith and practice. Till recently, no difficulty was
experienced in reducing it to practice. For forty years after the
effort was first made in this country, to return to original ground,
to the apostolic faith and practice, and restore the ancient order
of things; submit to the law of the Lord in all things; we found no
difficulty of consequence. But on the other hand we realized our
vantage ground, answered all the cavils of creed-mongers, fought our
way through, built up churches on Christ, set them in order under the
law of God, and thus were happy in the Lord. No people in this country
have ever been as happy and prosperous. All worked well. We silenced
all opposition.
But more recently, subtle schemes are on foot to invent an excuse for
something like the traditions of the elders among the Jews, substituted
for the law of God, the unwritten traditions of Rome, that has assumed
the place of the law of God, or the doctrines and commandments of
men, in our time, embodied in human creeds. One man finds a “law of
conscience,” another “a law of love,” another thinks we are not under
law, but under grace, but does not notice that Paul’s law, that we are
not under, is the law of Moses, and, that Paul’s grace, that we are
under, embraces the “law of Christ;” the “perfect law of liberty,” the
“law of the Spirit of life.” Another man finds a law of expediences,
more extended than the Jewish Talmud, or the unwritten traditions
of Rome. He soon has more opinions than faith, more expedients than
commandments of God, more charity than law or gospel, more love
for the pious unimmersed than for immersed believers, more charity
than hope. His gospel consists largely of tuning-forks, note-books,
hymn-books, choirs, organs, concerts, festivals, church fairs. He is
great on themes not in the Bible; the unwritten word; the traditions
of the fathers. These are dead weights on the body. They are enemies
within, sensual, not having the Spirit. We must meet them with the same
arguments that cut our way through sectarianism forty years ago.
We must rouse the spirit of the glorious pioneer men who fought the
early battles, cleared away sectarian rubbish, built up churches all
over the land and set them in order, and never stop till there is an
end to all the subtleties and sophistries, and all the insidious devices
now subverting “the right way of the Lord” and spreading dissension
among the children of God. We must stop all the loopholes being
invented for the introduction of _humanisms_, and _innovations_ of all
sorts, put away from among us the corrupt, the enemies of the cause,
and the worldly, and inculcate the pure teaching of the New Testament
among all, and live nearer to it than ever.
We met all this twaddle about a printed hymn-book, a meeting-house,
etc., not provided for by divine legislation, before we were in the
Church one year, from sectarians, and answered and exploded it. Now we
have men among us that talk of _progress_, _learning_ and an _advanced
age_, who have _advanced back_, and are trying to build an excuse
of the same matters for human legislation. They want to supply the
deficiency in the law of God by human law. With them there is no church
government in the law of God, and, therefore, we must make one. After
we have governed the churches by the law of God, fifty years, they have
advanced to the discovery that there is no church government in the
law of God. What do they propose? To make a church government. There
is a shorter road than this to sectarianism, and one that will be much
less trouble, and that is, to go back at once to some sect that has
set aside the law of God, and made one of its own, and adopted it.
They have made as good human laws as we can make, and better, for they
are old and experienced hands, and we would be but new and bungling
beginners. The efforts we have seen are mere _abortions_.