to exist when time ends. So view the subject from whatever standpoint you may, there is no relation between the church of God and modern sects. To point men to, and lead them into, sects by trying to identify these institutions with the Bible church is to make the truth of God falsehood and to become guilty of the sin of heresy. God help all honest souls to forsake all sects and abide in the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

"But," say these people, "are you not a sect yourselves? Are you not narrow?" No. In order to become a sect, we must organize a separate institution from the body of Christ. Thank God, we renounce all such institutions and abide only in Christ. Instead of being narrow and sectish, we are members of the only Bible church, the one to which all Christians belong. Therefore the whole family of God are our brethren and sisters. We have fellowship with all the saved. We simply renounce sects and all evil, but recognize the few scattered believers who, for want of better light, are still held in these fallen institutions.

Fourth. Christ is the head of but one body; sects comprise many separate bodies; hence

Christ is not their head. "And he is the head of the body, the church." Col. 1:18. "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." Rom. 12:5. "There is one body and one Spirit." Eph. 4: 4. The body is one, or "one body" (Col. 12:12). "Baptized into one body." Verse 13. "Reconciled in one body." Eph. 2:16. "Called in one body." Col. 3:15. The fact that there is only one body proves that there is but one church. Hence all other bodies are out of Christ. Sectism presents almost a thousand separate and distinct bodies. We prove our loyalty to God by abiding only in the one body-the church of God-and by rejecting all others as antichristian. If the multiplied organized bodies of sect-Babylon are right, then the Bible is wrong; for if the Bible is true, there is but one body, one church in Christ, and all others are antichristian. Reader, stand by the truth and let sects fall. Flee out of the midst of Babylon and deliver every man his soul. Christ is the head of but one body-his body. No sect, then, has Christ for its head. They have only human heads. As head of the church, Christ is its law

giver. He has given us the law-the New Testament-for the perfect government of his church. Sects have to revise their laws or discipline, whereas the law of the Lord is perfect and needs no revision.

Fifth. Salvation makes us members of the church of God, but not of any sect. This point is worthy of careful consideration. Jesus said, "I am the door. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." John 10:9. "And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." Acts 2:47. The church and the kingdom are the same. Conversion puts us into the kingdom (Matt. 18:3); through the new birth we enter it (John 3:3-5). The moment a sinner receives pardon, that moment he becomes a member of the church of God. Does conversion make one a member of the Baptist, of the Methodist, of the Dunkard, or of any other sect? It does not. These one must join. Some sects claim to be orthodox, among them the Christian, the Disciples, and the Catholic. But when a sinner repents and gets salvation, that does not make him a member of any of the above sects. Yet he is a member of the church of God. So with all their boastful claims, they are

classed with the sects of fallen Babylon. The only way to obtain membership in the new-testament church is to get salvation; so all its members are saved. We lose our membership in the church of God the moment we commit sin. "He that committeth sin is of the devil." 1 John 3: 8. But sects are full of sinners. There is no identity whatever between the church that Christ built and sect-Babylon.

Sixth. Christ takes the members into his church, whereas the preacher takes members into the sect. "But now hath God set the members every one in the body as it hath pleased him." 1 Cor. 12: 18. "The Lord added to the church daily." Acts 2:47. "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." Col. 1:13. Inducting into the church of God is a work of the Almighty. Men can not take you in. They can preach the Word, instruct souls in the way of righteousness, but setting us in the church is beyond their power. "God sets the members every one of them in the body." When a sinner repents and complies with all the Bible requirements, the Lord saves him and adds him to the church of God. He

has not, by virtue of salvation, been added to any sect. The preacher takes him into these institutions. But their excuse is this: They say that the Lord saves and adds to the invisible church, while they take members into the visible. In this, however, they are mistaken. The church of God existed centuries before their sects arose. Was it visible or invisible? Was the church of God in the days of the apostles an invisble institution? No; it was visible. The same is true today.

So from whatever standpoint we may view sectarian institutions in the light of the Bible, they are no part of, and have no identity with, the pure church of God. Hence there is positively no lawful excuse for their existence.