Brother Dolan makes a sweeping cut with his Sword like this: "Sectism is of the devil, and no-sectism is of the devil."
Amen. That's true. An ism spirit may attach itself to any principle, false or true.
As many sects have been developed by making a center of some subordinate point of the Christian system as by rallying upon some mere human tradition.
Whether men worship the moon or an idol of their own make, it is an equal insult to God; and whether men worship a gospel principle, or a doctrine of devils, is of little if any difference in the sight of God. Either case is idolatry; because Christ is supplanted as the center by something else either subordinate or foreign. When men get a chronic lopsidedness, so that they will scan greedily over a paper and drop it as soon as they see nothing on their hobby, whether it be sect or antisect, Sabbath or antisabbath, or anything else, notwithstanding it may contain much good, pure food, many blessed thoughts about Jesus, they have put something else in the place of Christ, and their religion runs about like a grindstone with its axis near the outer circumference and passing diagonally through the stone.
We once heard a Disciple preacher say that every sect that holds some truth that no other sect holds, has a right to its existence. This provides for as many sects as there are truths in the religion of Christ; but God allows no "schism in the body." Nothing but the exclusive 'holding the Head,' 'seeing Jesus only,' and the full enjoyment and constant "praising of the beauty of holiness," can keep us from all isms.
A selection from the Vanguard, copied in the Trumpet shows the spiritual state into which a number of leading holiness editors had by this time drifted because of a failure to follow as God was leading.
BACKSLIDDEN
Brother Brooks in the last number of the Banner (and his authority as the oldest holiness editor in the country can not be doubted) says that the aggressiveness has gone out of the holiness movement, and ceasing to be aggressive it is a dying thing. In most places its numbers are decreasing, only a few accessions.
Well, he tells the truth. The holiness people as a general thing through the country are backslidden from God. A large per cent of them never had anything but a reclaimed backslidden experience to leave. They got back to God and called it by the new name of holiness, taught to do so by superficial teachers that wanted to swell the Banner reports.