ALONE WITH GOD     

  Though great and popular counterfeits of the church have been formed on earth, which are very mutable in all their elements; though it is true that the real membership of God's church may increase and decrease in numbers, and that during the middle ages the saints were trodden down and so worn out by the persecuting powers of darkness that but few remained on earth to keep alive the holy seed; yea, and though it is also true that nearly all the doctrines and principles of the church of the living God were trodden under foot by the adversary and almost entirely hidden beneath the traditions and the inventions of men, yet it still remains true that every doctrinal element of the divine structure is eternal and unchangeable. Many factious bodies have arisen since Christ purchased and founded his holy community, but "the portion of Jacob is not like them; for he is the former of all things" (Jer. 51: 19). The fold of Christ is the same thing on earth today that she was before the first "molten image" of sectism was evolved born strife and spiritual ignorance. We have seen that God is the builder and maker of the church; and the wise man says, "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past." Eccl. 3:14-15. It looks, indeed, as if these words were placed on record to rebuke all the founders of new sects and inventors of new creeds, and also to vindicate tile unchangeable church of God.

  The law of Moses was given for a temporal purpose and for a limited time. "It was added because of transgressions [to restrain sinful deeds], till the seed should come." Gal. 3: 19. That seed is Christ (verse 16). So the law system was to remain only until Christ should come, and it was supplanted by the new covenant, the law of Christ. While it was in force, however, no man could set it aside, add to it, or take from it. But the Christian system constitutes the law of the kingdom of God, which shall "stand forever"; therefore it "shall be forever. " An attempt to change one word of it is sure death to the soul. Even the pope, with all his boasted power, is unable to change the eternal laws of the kingdom of heaven, though he shall "think to change times and laws" (Dan. 7: 25). No power short of the throne of God can change one thing in the divine church.

  The same self denial, and repentance, and utter forsaking of all sin, that were conditions of entering the church at the beginning must be met today. The same experience of entire sanctification and holy character demanded then is yet required and fully provided for in God's church. "No man can serve two masters" now any more than when Christ uttered the saying. Although Satan has deceived the mass of sectarian professors into the false belief that they can serve sin and Christ right along together— sin daily in word, thought, and deed, and yet be Christians—but the Book has not changed, and it is still true that "he that committeth sin is of the devil. " The same purity, unity, glory, power, and perfect peace, that God put in his church are yet there, though only appropriated by few men on earth. The miraculous gifts that the Lord set in the body have never been taken out. Gifts of wisdom, of knowledge, of healing, of discerning of spirits, and of casting out devils —all these are yet in the church, notwithstanding the teaching of sectarians to the contrary. Not finding these gifts in their bodies, they have taught that God has recalled such things. He has never promised to set in men's structures what he has placed in his own church. But since we have returned from Babylon to the heavenly Jerusalem, we find all the precious gifts yet remaining in it and awaiting the faith once delivered to the saints to grasp them and develop them into use. There is not one nonessential incorporated into the Word of God, nor yet one element that was to drop out after the death of the apostles or at any subsequent time.

  The inspired apostle Paul, speaking of the new testament ordinances, said to the Corinthians " For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread," etc. 1 Cor. 11: 23. And in verse 2 he commanded them, sayng, " Keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you." So God's people are not left at liberty to modify one of the ordinances in the least, much less to substitute the sprinkling rite of paganism and Romanism for the sacred ordinance of burial with Christ in baptism. How presumptuous it is to cast away one of the ordinances of Christ, as the largest portion of professors do, or all of them, as the Quakers and a few others do, taking the ridiculous position that the law of Christ met with a revision some time after the apostles died! How directly opposite to the words of Christ this falsehood! Thus we read: "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do till he come." And the command to baptize all who believe in Christ is incorporated in the commission which authorizes the perpetual ministry and to which is subjoined the promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. "

  So the obligation to administer the ordinance of baptism extends parallel with the commission to preach the gospel to the end of the world; and so of every element of the entire divine system. There is not a mutable factor in it. This fact is clearly established in Jude 3: "Beloved, . . . I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints." The verb "delivered" is in the aorist tense and therefore denotes that it was "delivered once for all," as rendered in the Revised Version and nearly all other translations. If it was delivered once for all, it is therefore unchangeable to the end of time. Even the language of the Common Version, "once delivered unto the saints, " conveys that idea. So we repeat that the church as it stood in its primitive glory and unity exists unchanged today.