It is a matter of common knowledge that evangelical Christians are not driven further apart but are really driven together whenever Christianity itself is placed under any special trial, as, for example, in foreign missionary work in heathen lands. And even in our own country, whenever a great local interest is taken in the work of soul-saving there is a corresponding tendency for Christians of different sects to ignore their differences of opinion and get together as if they believed in a common Lord over all and were all members of the same family. Thus, whenever the high tide of evangelism comes in, the landmarks of sects are scarcely visible; but whenever the tide goes out, behold, the ancient boundaries of sects appear as before. This fact proves that there are no fundamental reasons why sects should exist. It proves that in reality sects are a barrier to the true work of Christ; hence are, in their essential nature, antichristian. What, then, is the real cause of sects'?
Traced to the original source, modern sects, we find, originated where the papacy originated—in the corruption of Christianity in the early centuries. All came from the same roots of error.
However modified and diversified in external form and in doctrinal teaching they may now be, they exhibit in their ecclesiastical constitutions a foreign character derived from the foreign stock from which they sprang. Into this system there have been engrafted many noble scions of truth from the "good olive-tree," and these have produced commendable fruits of righteousness. But we are here concerned with pointing out those fundamental characteristics of the system that are foreign to the true church of Jesus Christ.
Erroneous ideas of the church
The first cause to which I call attention is an erroneous conception of the church itself. At the cost of some repetition I must point out that in the beginning the church was the universal company of the redeemed, the whole spiritual brotherhood, whether isolated members of Christ or those worshiping in local assemblies distributed over the earth. The tie which united these members of Christ in one body was their common faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and the life of the Spirit. But as in those times vast centralized imperial power was a divinity that every one worshiped, it was impossible properly to appreciate the moral and spiritual dominion of Christ by which alone he designed to rule his church; therefore men soon proceeded to pattern the church of Christ after the political government, first by grouping together under one administrative human headship the congregations of a province or section of the empire, and then finally uniting these different provinces under one administrative headship at Rome. From that day until the present time the church-idea that has generally prevailed in Christendom has been an organization fashioned according to the kingdoms of this world; a human organization in which the administrative functions of government are centralized under some form of human headship; a unity that is not moral and spiritual, but official and administrative, as well as legislative and judicial.
Wrong standard of church-membership
Coincident with the creation of foreign ideals concerning church societies was the formation of of a foreign idea of church-membership and church-relationship. In the beginning, as we have shown, the church was simply the divine family. Therefore salvation through Christ was its sole condition of membership. "And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved" (Acts 2:47, R.V.). And as the local congregation was but the concrete expression of the ideals of the general body or church, that membership in Christ which made men members of the general body, made them, by a moral and spiritual law, members of all the other members of Christ, and therefore fixed their local relationship: they belonged by divine right with whichever company of believers they happened to be associated. Nothing more than simple recognition of what God had done for them and the according to them of the local rights and privileges that naturally belonged to them was necessary on the part of a local congregation to make the actual union complete.
The wrong conception of the constitution of the church necessarily required another standard of church-membership. When church came to signify merely a group of congregations consolidated under a centralized human headship possessing administrative, legislative, and judicial functions (so organized as to distinguish it from all other organized groups or congregations), simple membership in Christ was insufficient to mark the convert with the stamp of denominational individuality. Salvation itself made no one a member of a church fashioned according to the kingdoms of this world. Consequently another standard of membership was necessary, a standard which required acceptance of and conformity to the self-made rules and regulations of that foreign society called a church. And when these earth-born institutions became identified in the public mind with the real church of Christ and membership in them became confused with membership in the true church of God, the natural result was that millions complied, in a formal manner at least, with the conditions of the counterfeit church membership who never knew what it meant to be vitally joined to Christ. In this we see the "evil" fruit which grew on that tree of error. The multitudes that have been by this means deceived with the thought that they were Christians, only to be lost at last, will not be known until that awful day of final reckoning.
Divisive nature of the creeds