Having thrown aside the officers of the church, Christianity lost its authority and could no longer administer in the ordinances of the Gospel for the salvation of the souls of the children of men. Instead of the officers and endowments of the kingdom or church of God, man-made doctrines and changeable creeds have been substituted, until to-day the Christian world is "driven and tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine." Weakness, imbecility and lack of authority are {304} written on its every movement; vice, sin and wrong-doing prosper and flourish under the very droppings of the sanctuary. To-day one theory is taught, tomorrow another. Men have "builded cisterns that will not contain water;" in short, have turned from the apostle at the head of the church, and the prophet in the church of the living God, and heaped to themselves teachers, having itching ears, who have turned the hearts of the people from the truth, and led them astray after fables, until "darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the minds of the people." Conflicting creeds and faiths fill the world with a war of words, until the hearts of honest men become sick, sick!--sick of the petty jealousies and miserable trickery of professing Christianity--sending the blood-guilty murderer, with his hands reeking with the blood of his victims, from the gallows to eternal glory and the presence of Deity; while an honest man, because he differs from them in belief, must be consigned to a never ending hell! Oh consistency! thy name is not modern Christianity! Without apostles, without prophets, without the gifts, without authority, shorn of all thy pristine beauty and loveliness, all thy grandeur and glorious attributes; torn and divided into a multitude of fragments, continually dividing and sub-dividing, thy talk sounds like that of the scribes of old, "without authority." And what of thy teachers? "Blind leaders of the blind." Prophecy foretells their doom: Struggling to uphold the columns of the house of Babylon, the dwelling place of "the mother of harlots," and her numerous offspring, they will be crushed in her downfall, unless they speedily repent and turn to the true and living God, be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins, and receive the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, that will "lead them into all truth, and bring to their remembrance things of the past, and show them things to come," for the promise is unto all that "the Lord our God shall call." To members of churches as well as non-members--to the whole world does this proclamation come. _God has set up His Kingdom, or church, upon the earth, never more to be thrown down_. His duly appointed and authorized officers are ready to admit men and women as citizens of this kingdom, or church. He or she who hears the sound of this gospel and heeds it not will be under condemnation. He or she who heeds and renders obedience to it will reap life everlasting.