Even if the Spirit had not been given to effect this unity, if the Gospel had not enforced it by the plainest denunciation of heresies and schisms—crimes classed by it with the worst and lowest, and most certain to exclude from heaven; even if CHRIST had never prayed for their union, nor taught them that they were to be united, still, if the disciples of religion were like the followers of any other cause, it might have been expected—it would have seemed morally impossible that it should be otherwise—that the remembrance and love of their Master, the cause which they had taken up, the knowledge of the way in which alone it could be furthered, their common relationship, and interests, and aims, and hopes, would have kept them in one body, would have bound them fast to each other in the bonds of peace. And, doubtless, it would have been so, but for the influence and machinations of the evil one. There could have been no other fruit from such seed, but that the enemy sowed tares in the same field. In CHRIST, self had been denied and destroyed. His Church was to be the embodiment and propagator of self-denial, self-submission, self-devotion. Such a Church threatened antichrist with certain destruction: for antichrist is the spirit of self—and selfishness destroyed, where would be sin? Therefore, the Devil sought to break up or mar and impair the Church; and, to accomplish his object, infused into as many of its members as he could, the very spirit of self, which it was commissioned to destroy. Alas! he was too successful in his fell work. Soon self began to ask, “Why should I not choose what to believe—what to do? Why should I not make to myself a name, and claim for myself authority, and power, and reverence? Why should I not have private views, and seek private ends? Why should I suffer, and forbear, and seek another’s good, rather than my own?” The selfish question was father to the selfish determination; and so, even in the Apostles’ time, the faith was mutilated here and denied there—there were heresies, and schisms, and strifes, and boastings of spiritual gifts, and withholding of temporal substance from GOD, and indulgence of lusts, and hatings, and revengings, and backbitings, and fightings, and denying of one another, among those who were all called with one calling, enlightened and sanctified by one Spirit, appointed to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And so it has continued to the present time. There is no such reasoning, and questioning, and quibbling, and deciding for oneself what to believe, about any other subject, as about the truth, which GOD has plainly taught and has clearly defined. There are no other divisions so numerous, so lamentable, so strife-begotten, and strife-engendering, as in the one body of CHRIST. Pride, and ambition, and self-seeking, in all its worst forms; evil suspicions, revilings, hatred, persecutions, have abounded,