This appraisal of Luther’s work will fit, in a general way, the work of other reformers. They made similar errors. If they had maintained the scientific attitude—which means to test every point, investigate to see if you are right and change when you’re wrong, prove all things and hold fast to that which is good—then they would have kept getting back closer to God. But when their movements became crystallized, when they became satisfied with their _status quo_, and had acquired a number of members who were without conviction, then they not only ceased getting back closer to God but they began to drift away from Him. As a consequence, many of the denominations today resemble their mother, the Roman Catholic Church, more than they did in the beginning. And so, my friends, we have before us a brief outline of how denominations got started. The Roman Catholic Church is the result of centuries of drifting away from the New Testament pattern. Since it reached the zenith of its power, many other denominations have resulted from unsuccessful and incomplete efforts to reform the Catholics or some other existing group. In most cases the movement of the reformers, because of indifference and a lack of conviction in their ranks, eventually lost ground. In every instance, consciously or unconsciously, something besides the Bible has been accepted as authority. Errors, which the Protestant churches, willingly or unwillingly, inherited from the Catholics have been handed down from generation to generation even to the present. Thus, many unscriptural practices and doctrines of the denominations are traceable to the church at Rome with its preposterous claim of infallibility. Many members of denominations do not realize that much of what they get from their parents and preachers and which they fancy to be of Biblical origin, has, in fact, descended from Rome and can claim no higher authority. VI The Restoration Movement But to pursue our historical survey a little further, at the beginning of the nineteenth century with three hundred years of Protestant denominational history before them, various religious leaders were awakened to the evils of creeds, and a “back to the Bible” movement was begun. In America the work of these men became known as the Restoration Movement. It was their purpose to go back to Pentecost, to begin at Jerusalem, as a surveyor begins at the established corner, mark out the lines revealed in the New Testament, and establish congregations just like the pattern that Jesus gave. That was a noble undertaking and it proved to be a very successful one. It was the fastest growing religious movement the world had seen since the days of the apostles.