[INNOVATIONS IN THE
CHURCH OF CHRIST.]
IN reading the history of the church, one is overwhelmed to see how innovations have crept in and eat the vitals out of the church. At every period of the church, when there was any vitality in it, any spirituality or devotion to God, there has been a constant effort on the part of the enemy, through some well-meaning, but worldly minded professors of religion, to work things into the church, or to work something out of it, in the nature of the case calculated to corrupt and destroy it. We must be awake to these wily manœuverings and guard against them, or they will ruin the great work so well begun and so successfully carried on in our time. The insidious, wily and stealthy machinations of the Grecian and Gnostic philosophers, did an immense work in corrupting the primitive church. Many of these did this, too, with the best intentions in the world. They thought it would be a grand acquisition to the Christian religion, an accomplishment and refinement, to append to it philosophy, and require every preacher to be a philosopher. These were constantly edging into the pure religion of Christ their fine philosophical notions, pagan customs and ceremonies, and destroying the church whenever they did it. On the other hand, learned Judaizers were foisting Judaism into the church at every opportunity. Between Judaizers on the one hand, and Gnostic philosophers on the other, they amalgamated Christianity, Judaism and Paganism, and made Romanism. It was easy to obtain the idea of infant membership from Judaism, the idea of image worship from Paganism, and the idea of one true church from Christianity, and thus incorporate a system with a membership based in the flesh, making all the infants members, without any regeneration, under pagan idolatry, in worshipping images, and at the same time, with the idea that they are the true church.
[THE BIBLE GROUND.]
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.