Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. WarnerByers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Religion
Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner
Byers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) -- History; Warner, D. S. (Daniel Sidney), 1842-1895
The division of the church into parties not only destroys the
power and holiness thereof, but is the greatest impediment to
the conversion of the world to God. Again we will hear Brother
Starr, and the blessed Redeemer himself. "Would that the church of
Christ might pause long enough from its sectarian strife to hear
the voice of its Redeemer and Lord pleading with God in prayer
on that sorrowful night ere the traitor came--'Holy Father, keep
through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, =that they
may be one=, as we are.... Neither pray I for these alone, but
for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that
they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that
thou hast sent me.' The prayers of Christ were not offered for a
light matter, least of all that memorable petition which the pen of
inspiration has recorded for the church in all ages to wonder and
weep over, the prayer of its dying Lord. The desirableness of that
visible union of his people for which Christ prayed as the means of
impressing his truth on the world, and the evils of those divisions
against which the apostle so earnestly exhorts, need to be better
understood by the church.... May God grant you a disposition to
look the evil fairly in the face."
Oh, the thousands of souls that are being lost to all eternity
through the selfish, wicked, and carnal spirit of our churchism!
God is dishonored, yea, robbed of the purchase of his Son's death,
and infidelity stalks abroad; the result of a divided house.
It is said that "the possessor of perfect love of necessity
overleaps denominations in spirit." Does not this love prove that
they are in the way of the Spirit of Christ? And shall we compel
the Lord to drag his children together over these cursed walls,
only to have walls rise up again, and grieve away the Holy Spirit?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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