McG-4-LETTER IV.

LETTER IV.

Dear Sir:--In my third letter, I commenced pointing out the particulars in which the churches represented in your "Union Association" are now divided. When all these particulars are placed before you in clear light, you will see the precise work which lies before your Association, and may prosecute it intelligibly. I hope that you now see your want of union in the "one Lord." When your different books of discipline, all enacted by some other authority than that of Jesus, are all laid aside, and your parties unite in accepting the word of the Lord as your only rule of discipline, you will be in this respect united.

Next in the natural order comes the "one faith." It is in reference to this that you appear to the world most divided. And certainly, if we look at your various creeds as the test, this appearance is not unreal. You have not two creeds among your twelve denominations that are just alike. If, then, these creeds are the measures or the faith among you, you have no less than twelve faiths instead of one. Here, then, is a great work of healing and uniting to be effected by your Association. The points of difference between your several creeds are mostly very minute, and to a looker on they appear so insignificant that they are now popularly illustrated by the difference between tweedle dum and tweedle dee. For division over such things the whole of you have been ridiculed by wits and scoffed at by Catholics and skeptics, until it is time that you were heartily ashamed of it, even if’ you were free, as you are not, from a sense of sin in the matter. And even the graver points of difference have reference not to what the Scriptures say, but to your inferences and deductions therefrom. You admit, too, that the most important of them is non-essential to Christian fellowship and to final salvation. Why, then, do you disgrace yourselves before the whole world, and bring down the condemnation of heaven upon your heads, by rending into fragments the body of Christ for the sake of such things? The way to union on this point is too plain for the wayfaring man to err therein. You are divided only on the things in which your creeds differ; you are united in agreeing that everything plainly declared in the Word of God is true. You agree, too, that it is necessary, and at the same time all-sufficient, for a man to believe the latter, while it is not at all necessary for him to believe the former. Cast away, then, the creeds which divide you, and unite on the Scriptures alone, which you all profess even now to believe with all your heart. If you are not willing to do this, then dismiss all pretense of desiring and acknowledge before the world that you love party more than you love God; for I assure you that the world will give you no credit for sincerity while you acknowledge yourselves sinners on account of division, and yet refuse to throw away non-essentials for the sake of union. But all the points of union thus far discussed would be insufficient. Though you were united in the one God, the one Lord, the one Spirit, the one hope, and the one faith; you remain divided in reference to baptism, the disease is still unhealed and the contention must still go on. Paul therefore positively requires union on the one baptism. You are notoriously divided here, for you have among you not less than three baptisms, You have the sprinkling of infants, who neither believe nor repent, nor are capable of obedience. You then have the sprinkling of adults, who believe and repent, and who obey in that rite a human tradition. And in the third place, you have the immersion of penitent believers, who obey a divine commandment. It is impossible that these three should constitute one baptism; for they differ in every single thing that is necessary to the idea of that rite. They differ in the act performed by the administrator, in the preparation of the candidate, in the motive of both candidate and administrator, and in the authority which is respected. If baptism is an act of obedience to God, then the infant is not baptized, because it does not and cannot obey. If the one baptism requires moral preparation in the candidate, then the infant is not baptized, for it experiences no moral change. If a proper motive or object in the candidate is necessary, then the baptisms are not one, because in one case there is no motive whatever. If the authority respected is an element of the rite, the three are not one, for in one case no authority is known, in another the authority of man is all that is known, and in the third the authority of God alone is respected.

You see, Bishop, that you must unite on one baptism; and now, which one of the three will you take? If simple unity in one baptism were all that is required, then I would say that the majority ought to rule. The Baptists, then, would have to succumb; and as they agree with you that baptism is a non-essential, they ought not to think this a hardship. It is certainly a most shameful thing in them to split off from the great mass of their Protestant brethren merely for the sake of a non-essential. Come, my Baptist brethren, show the world that you are sincere in calling baptism a non-essential by abandoning your distinctive immersion, and uniting in one baptism with your brethren. It is a favorite principle with you that the majority should rule; so act upon it, and show yourselves consistent.

Supposing now, that the Baptists shall adopt this sensible advice, you have still, dear Bishop, to decide between your other two baptisms. Which of these will you take? If consistent, you will take the infant sprinkling, because if you had your own way every child born into this world would be sprinkled in its infancy; and as there would be none left to be baptized later in life, adult baptism would never more be known on earth. You would then be united in one baptism; but what a baptism it would be! A baptism not appointed by the one Lord, nor known at all in your only rule of faith in which you had previously united. In adopting it, therefore, you would have once more rejected the one Lord for some human lawgiver, and the one faith for the traditions of men. Thus, you see, how a mistake on one of the seven points of unity must involve the whole scheme in confusion, as the removal of one stone from an arch precipitates the whole structure in ruins. Will you now receive the thought which this train of reflection shows to be necessary? It is a thought essential to the force of what Paul says upon each of the seven points of unity. It is this, that the one God, the one Lord, the one baptism, etc., shall be the God, the Lord, and the baptism referred to by Paul, and acknowledged by all the apostles. To be united in one God would not be Christian union if that, one God was Jupiter; neither could we secure Paul’s unity by having as one Lord that man on the Tiber called "Lord God the Pope;" or that woman at the Court of St. James called the "Head of the Church of England." So, no baptism is the one essential to Christian union except that one practiced by the apostles; and you know, Bishop, and so do all your associates, that it was a baptism of which penitent believers were the subjects, obedience to God the motive, burial in water and rising again the action, and remission of sins the consequent. On this baptism you must unite, or adopt one horn of a fearful dilemma,--either continue to perpetuate the sin of division, or reject the authority of your only Lord by uniting on a human tradition which makes void the commandment of God. But even were you united in the six points now presented, yet separated as you now are into twelve different organizations, you will still present to the world a divided state of the church. No less essential to complete unity than any other is Paul’s seventh item, the one body. By this is not meant one grand, consolidated organization, like the Roman hierarchy, English or Methodist Episcopacy, the Presbyterian body, or any other in which superior courts are instituted to rule over individual congregations. Paul means the one body existing in his day, wherein it is notorious that there was no consolidated organization, not even so much as to embrace two congregations. Their unity consisted in the fact that each had the same internal organization with all the others. I need not inform you that this organization embraced no other officers than bishops and deacons; the bishops being very different in authority and extent of jurisdiction from yourself. They also raised up from among themselves, and sent out to the world faithful men to preach the gospel to the world, and instruct the saints in all the will of God. Whenever the individual congregations included among the twelve denominations represented in your body, after adopting all the other items of unity, come to adopt this organization, renouncing all others, they will be united in the one body, and will stand forth before the world untainted by the sin of division.

I will not startle and alarm you by tracing out the immense revolution necessary in all your denominations in order to effect this scriptural scheme of union. It were better for you to keep your eye fixed on the scheme itself as exhibited in the Word of God, and enforced by many precepts which you can find there, until you become completely enamored of it, before you hover round to see the havoc it would make in your time-honored institutions of human device. It will require even then more faith in Christ, and zeal for his truth, than most men possess, to enable you to make the sacrifice. But, to strengthen you for the work, let me again remind you of your own admission that "sin and manifold evils" attend your present state of division. And let me still further encourage you by the assurance that the union association to which I belong has succeeded in fully uniting multitudes of men and women from all parties on these seven pillars upholding the grand temple of God. They have come together in every way that men can come, by ones, by tens, by scores, by whole congregations, and, in one instance, by whole denominations; and leaving their human laws, their human creeds, their human baptisms, their human organizations, all behind them, they have presented a new thing tinder this modern sun, though one which the ancient sun delighted to shine upon, a united and happy church, with no God but the Father of all, no Lord but Jesus, no Spirit but the Spirit of God, no hope but the Christian’s hope, no faith but the Word of God, no baptism but the one apostolic immersion, no authoritative organization but the one body of Jesus Christ. If this is the end to which your movement leads, may God grant you grace and wisdom to bring it to a successful issue; and let all the people say, Amen!

Yours for a united church,

J. W. MCGARVEY.