sake of local convenience, and in the spirit of love; but we speak of those divisions which result from disagreement and contention, and from the assumed impossibility or difficulty of remaining together in peace.

The unity of the church was understood in this sense by Christ himself; and it was so understood by his Apostles after his ascension into heaven, and the plenary effusion of the holy spirit on the day of Pentecost. That some difference would arise among true believers, on doctrinal and practical subjects, was known to the Saviour and his Apostles; for they were well acquainted with the imperfections of the human understanding; but neither he nor they could have suffered the thought of a division of the church, for such a cause, to have been harboured for a moment in the minds of Christians.

Every reader of the Acts of the Apostles knows that an unhappy disagreement arose between Paul, who was specially designated to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and some of the Jews in those parts where he ministered. When the news of this disagreement was carried to Jerusalem, some of the Apostles who laboured in that city and in the adjoining country of the Jews, took sides against Paul. It is evident, from the fifteenth chapter of the Acts, taken in connexion with the second chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, that this matter caused a strong excitement, easily accounted for from the nature of the subject, and the circumstances attending the case. But neither party took the ground that they might be considered as belonging, one to the Jewish and the other to the Gentile church, and so each pursue his own course independently of the other. No; they knew they must be united; that they had no right to rend asunder the church which God had joined together in the bond of in

violable union; and that by suffering the commencement of schisms, a train of evils would be brought upon the church of which they were unable to calculate the amount of duration. Paul, taking with him Barnabas and Titus, went to Jerusalem, and conferred with the other Apostles; an amicable understanding was, after considerable difficulty, effected, and the threatened rupture happily avoided; the parties acting in the spirit of conciliation and forbearance.

Whenever dissentions arise in communities, a separation between the parties at variance, is, to the corrupt mind of man, a natural suggestion. This separation may often be proper and harmless in those communities which are not designed to be of permanent duration. And the seeds of disunion being easily sown in the church, there has been from the beginning, notwithstanding the evident design of God that the church should endure to the end of the world, a disposition for one to say to the other, in case of any disagreement, "Stand by thyself." Had Paul yielded to this spirit, how plausible might have seemed to him the expediency of setting up himself as the head of the Gentile church, leaving John, Peter, James, and the other Apostles, to manage the concerns of the Jewish church? He had been chosen and sent by Christ himself to preach the gospel to the Heathen, and in the course of his ministry among them, he was constantly vexed by the Judaising teachers, who sought to bring his converts under the yoke of the ritual law, while he was anxiously desirous that they should enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. The establishment of a separate Gentile church might have seemed to him the most effectual measure to destroy the influence of those teachers who so much annoyed him, as well as

disturbed and injured the converts under his ministry. And the difference between the Jews and the Gentiles in their national character, education, manners, habits, and other circumstances, might have presented an ample apology to human reason for a separation from the mother church. But Paul knew that the church was one by the constitution of Christ its head; and that any division of it would have been utterly unlawful and inadmissible. He knew it would be presumptuous impiety in him to rebuild the partition wall which Jesus Christ, by his death, had broken down; and that he might not put asunder what his divine master had joined together.

The same Apostle, as appears from his acts and his epistles, was deeply impressed with the value of the church's unity, and the calamities that would be consequent on its violation. His whole soul seems to have been burdened with the subject. With what earnestness does he caution the believers, to whom he addresses his epistles, against this principle of division? He tells the Corinthians it had been declared to him that there were contentions among them, for that every one of them said, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephus, and I of Christ. He also tells them, "Ye are yet carnal; for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?” And again, "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement." The Apostle does not assume to heal their dissentions by interposing his authority to settle the question which party was right, or wherein the other was

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wrong; but he goes to the root of the evil, showing that the very fact of the disunion of Christians evinces the carnality, the unholy temper or habit of mind, into which they had suffered themselves to be betrayed. The Corinthians doubtless believed, as the different denominations at this day believe in regard to themselves, that they had sufficient reason for separating from those who agreed not with them in their preferences; but the Apostle does not deem it necessary for his argument to demand of them what was the difference between himself and Apollos and Cephas; nor does he instruct them that they were disputing about trifles or minor differenHe presses upon them the unity of the church, and the sin and absurdity of a division of it into distinct denominations arising from strife and disagreement. He does not admit one party to be less guilty than the other. The one that said I belong to Paul's persuasion, and he who said I believe with Apollos, and the third who enlisted himself among the admirers of Cephas, and even those, who, in the spirit and pride of sect and party, boasted of their superiority to the rest by claiming to belong to Christ, all are alike reproved as either not understanding, or in their unholy excitements for getting the relation in which they stood to each other as members of the same body of Christ, and "members one of another." He asks with abruptness and with great pertinency and emphasis, "Is Christ divided?" As if he had said, "If there may be two or more churches, either all but one must be without a head, or the head must be divided into as many fragments as there are churches, both of which are equally impossible."

This vital principle was deeply engraven on the minds of the primitive Christians, no such thing being known

as the separation of one body of believers from another on the ground of difference in matters of opinion, or on points of practice. The church continued one and undivided through the age of the apostles, and after the death of the last surviving apostle, even to the middle of the third century. In that period the gospel had been propagated, and the church extended throughout the inhabited world, and yet no such thing as a distinct denomination of Christians was known. The church, says Milnor, "was not broken into handfuls of distinct sects and parties, all glorying in having something peculiarly excellent, and prone to despise their neighbours." See Milnor's church history, vol. I. 275, 276. And why during that long period of more than two hundred years, subsequent to the death of Christ, did the church remain unbroken? Was it because men gave but little attention to religion? Never has it so much engrossed the minds of men as during that age of the world. Was it because the gospel had not spread to a great distance, so as to come in contact with the minds of men of various habits, under different degrees of intellectual culture, and living in different parts of the earth? It had spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the world, and the church embraced within her bosom Jews and Gentiles, philosophers, princes and peasants of every clime, combining all the elements necessary to the production of schism. Was it because the men at that period were all infallibly taught and guided by the Holy Spirit in the maintenance of the same opinions, and the pursuit of the same practices? Not so; scarcely had the preaching of the gospel commenced, before differences of sentiment and practice occurred between Christians. This is evident from the epistles of the apostles Paul, James, Peter,