The Plymouth Brethren would “unite Christendom by its dismemberment, and do away with all sects by the creation of a new sect, more narrow and bitter in its hostility to existing sects than any other.” Yet the tendency to organize is so strong in human nature, that even Plymouth Brethren, when they meet regularly together, fall into an informal, if not a formal, organization; certain teachers and leaders are tacitly recognized as officers of the body; committees and rules are unconsciously used for facilitating business. Even one of their own writers, C. H. M., speaks of the “natural tendency to association without God,—as in the Shinar Association or Babel Confederacy of _Gen. 11_, which aimed at building up a name upon the earth. The Christian church is God’s appointed association to take the place of all these. Hence God confounds the tongues in Gen. 11 (judgment); gives tongues in _Acts 2_ (grace); but only one tongue is spoken in _Rev. 7_ (glory).” The Nation, Oct. 16, 1890:303—“Every body of men must have one or more leaders. If these are not provided, they will make them for themselves. You cannot get fifty men together, at least of the Anglo‐Saxon race, without their choosing a presiding officer and giving him power to enforce rules and order.” Even socialists and anarchists have their leaders, who often exercise arbitrary power and oppress their followers. Lyman Abbott says nobly of the community of true believers: “The grandest river in the world has no banks; it rises in the Gulf of Mexico; it sweeps up through the Atlantic Ocean along our coast; it crosses the Atlantic, and spreads out in great broad fanlike form along the coast of Europe; and whatever land it kisses blooms and blossoms with the fruit of its love. The apricot and the fig are the witness of its fertilizing power. It is bound together by the warmth of its own particles, and by nothing else.” This is a good illustration of the invisible church, and of its course through the world. But the visible church is bound to be distinguishable from unregenerate humanity, and its inner principle of association inevitably leads to organization.