In the days of the apostles, God had a people in Babylon, but while they were in Babylon they were not of Babylon. Hence the Lord says: “Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not her plagues” (Rev. 18:4). God doubtless has a people in Babylon now; but they and Babylon are two distinct things. God’s church is not composed of the Babel of sectarianism. Just who God’s people are who may now be in Babylon it is not my purpose to determine. God has revealed to us the things that pertain to his church—the faith, the practice, and the promises—and with these it is my purpose to deal. Here, all is faith and assurance; beyond this, all is opinion and fruitless speculation. Concerning those in Babylon we have but one living direction. “Come forth, my people, out of her.” To this we should give faithful heed. For to console people in the Babylon of sectarianism, and to reconcile them to their bondage, we have no divine right; but to deliver them from it is a divine obligation. Therefore God’s church is an institution separate and distinct from the Babel of denominationalism. In determining, then, what the church should be, it will be necessary to ascertain the characteristics of the apostolic church. If the church of the present day be essentially different from the apostolic as a matter of preference, it can not be the church of which God is the author. Hence it can not be a divine institution, neither can it be the virgin bride of Christ. It follows, therefore, that the church must possess the following characteristics: 1. It Must Be a Divine Institution At the beginning the church was a divine institution, and it can not cease to be divine and still be the church of God, for God does not begin with the divine and end with the human. Beginning in the spirit the things of God are not made perfect in the flesh. A divine institution must have for its organization and essential features divine authority, for the world can not make an ordinance or an institution divine. It must be specially appointed of God. No human institution, therefore, nor combination of institutions for which there is no special divine appointment, can ever constitute the church of God, for it is of God and not of men. Hence the church must be in all its essential features of specific divine appointment. These appointments are all found in the New Testament; therefore, the church to be a divine institution must be fashioned after that model. 2. It Must Be Governed Wholly by Divine Authority.