To many this may seem a hard saying; but I request that the matter be given the most careful attention in the light of prophecy and divine truth. It is true that the Sixteenth Century Reformation at first brought the witnesses out of the wilderness of seclusion where they had remained during the long night of Romanism and exhibited them to the public view; but when thus placed upon exhibition, they were soon robbed entirely of their position as the Vicars, or Governors, of God's church. Since creed and sect-making first began, the Word and Spirit have not possesed governing power and authority in Protestantism; but men have usurped that place and prescribed authoritative rules of faith and practise for the people. The principles of Higher Criticism have so far pervaded the realm of sectarian theology that a vast number of the clergy no longer regard the Bible as the inspired word of God to man, but simply as a remarkable piece of religious literature recording the natural development of the religious consciousness among a peculiarly sensitive race of people. Protestantism certainly has placed the Bible on the dissecting table and dismembered it in a manner wholly unknown before. While Protestants will not for a moment allow the blessed Book to be hidden out of sight--put "into graves"--still they will not grant it that place it should occupy as the sole discipline of faith, so it is a dead letter to them. That all-glorious doctrine of Bible _unity_, which fills the whole New Testament, strikes a deathblow to all the carnal divisions and institutions of sectarianism; and so with one accord they unite in _fighting it_. "Oh, the good old blessed Bible! we could not do without it," say they; yet, as everybody knows, they are governed by the discipline and laws that they or their representatives have formulated. Thus, the Word and Spirit of God are brought under the public gaze, only to be treated with such indignity in God's sight, and killed; while infidels look on, and tauntingly remark, "Either the religion of to-day is no Christianity, or the Word of God is a lie."