Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner

by A. L. Byers

2. Disposition to obey all Scripture and to let the Spirit have his way and rule. This constitutes her safety in matters of doctrine and government.

3. An attitude receptive to any further truth and light. This safeguards against dogmatism and a spirit of infallibility and intolerance, against interpreting Christianity in the light of traditions and old ideas.

4. Acknowledgment of good wherever found and the placing of no barrier that would exclude any who might be Christians. This makes salvation, a holy life, and a Christian spirit the only test of fellowship, and disapproves all human standards of church membership and fellowship.

We repeat that these constitute the Scriptural standard of the church and characterize her in her unity and integrity. It is by lacking in one or more of these essentials that a sect is a sect. In the rise of the church out of apostasy any reformation that does not develop to the full the essentials that characterize the church in her wholeness and completeness must necessarily fall short of being the final reformation and must leave a cause for further reformation. This is the explanation of the existence of the so-called Christian sects, viewing them in the most charitable light. The Wesleys and their early associates sought for deeper personal spirituality as well as better spiritual association than was afforded in the state church of England. They brought to light and gave particular prominence to the doctrine of sanctification by faith and the witness of the Holy Spirit. Their work was a reform; but as in that day the question of division among Christians was not prominent, nor was the question of the one true church understood or appreciated, their work took definite form in a body humanly organized and called Methodist. The Campbells had considerable light on the unity of the church, and proposed the Scriptures alone as a basis on which all Christians could unite. But they blindly shut themselves in on a point of doctrine by associating entrance into the kingdom or church with the act of immersion in such manner as to make a wall between them and other Christians who should give evidence of having received salvation and therefore church membership, otherwise than through baptism. Thus they made themselves a sect. John Winebrenner had the correct idea of the church as comprising all the saved, and his work was on an unsectarian basis. Lacking, however, in the quality of letting the Spirit of God rule, eldership organizations were soon set up, a man rule came in, and they also became a sect. Inflexible as to doctrine, they closed the door of progress on themselves, rejected the truth on holiness, and became one of the most narrow of sects, though bearing the Scriptural name, Church of God.

A FINAL REFORMATION

It must follow, and the assumption is already established, that a reformation which takes in full the characteristics defining the church in her wholeness must thereby reach the New Testament standard and therefore be the last, or final, reformation. No reformation can make good such claim if it does not proceed on whole-church lines or principles. If a reform does progress on those universal principles, we need look no farther for, nor await future years to reveal, the final reformation resulting in the restoration of all things to the Scriptural ideal.

The errors of the religious world are, and have been, the failure to so preach salvation truth that people may obtain and enjoy full deliverance from sin; failure to conform to the divine standard on all lines; the human ecclesiastical system, which hinders Holy Spirit organization and government; and separation of God's people into parties, thus making true church relation impossible. A movement that comprehends a correction of all these, and meets the Scriptural standard, must therefore fill the measure of reform.

Reader, it is claimed for the movement represented in the teaching and labors of D. S. Warner, that it possesses these elements of finality, that by it God is bringing his people "out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day" of Protestant sectism, and is restoring Zion as at first. It is not assumed that Brother Warner was right on every point of doctrine or in every application of a Scriptural text, but that the movement, in addition to being based on correct Scriptural principles otherwise, possesses that flexibility and spirit of progress by which it adjusts itself as God gives light.

1. It teaches the Scriptural process of salvation, by which people may obtain a real deliverance from sin and have the Holy Spirit as a witness to their salvation.