very framework on which it would
rest, human ecclesiasticism, is foreign to the original conception of
the church. It would be only a human arrangement patterned after the
model of a world-empire. And for another reason such would not be the
church. The divine _ekklesia_ includes in its membership the whole
family of God. Thousands of men and women who are united to Christ
and in fellowship with all the saved are not members of the formally
organized sects. Therefore the union of all such churches in one
federation would not include the whole family.

[Sidenote: Back to the Bible standard]

Thus, the remedy for sects is not church federation, nor a return to
the historic creeds, nor the adoption of one of the exclusive forms
of church polity; neither is it an attempt to hide the sin of the
obnoxious sect system by covering it with a mantle of charity and
patience--as a sort of necessary evil. What, then, is the real remedy
for sects? It is the absolute rejection of every foreign element that
has crept into the Christian system and the return to that primitive
conception of the church as made up of the entire brotherhood of
Christ, organized and controlled by the Holy Spirit. For true unity
we must turn from hierarchies and apostolical successions and priestly
corporations and church synods and human creeds to THE CHRIST who
alone is the head of the church.

[Sidenote: True membership]

Such a movement requires a moral revolution with respect to the
attitude of God's people toward membership in sects. It requires the
obliteration of sect lines and the recognition of no other bond of
union than that of a common brotherhood through union with Christ.
Divine life secured through repentance and faith is the sole condition
of membership in the church of Christ, and this relationship is
maintained by obedience to the commands of Christ and consistent
Christian conduct. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light,
we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).

[Sidenote: Elimination of ecclesiasticism]

Such a movement and such a standard of church relationship require the
elimination of all ideas of priestly ecclesiasticism. The Christ
of the New Testament church is not an absent Christ. He has
never resigned his position as head of the church and vested the
governmental authority in a self-perpetuating clerical caste. His
government is theocrati