Kinship of God and Man (Volume 3) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. Excerpt: ... CHRISTIAN UNITY1 Christian unity does not mean uniformity--Rise of Sectarianism--Diverse gifts of all become the unified gift of each--The fivefold diversity in the ministry--Divine unity of the Church--One spirit and one faith make outward nnity--Dreary chaos of infallible individualism--Real unity among all Christians--Superstructures of wood and stubble--The kind of Church needed. I. Christian Unity Does Not Mean Uniformity. St. Paul is always the Apostle St. Paul--the statesman of the church. He saw beneath the shallows into the eternal spirit of things, and in the midst of infinite variety saw all things united in God; that the church must have unity as there is unity in God and diversity as there is diversity in God; and speaks of our oneness in the Spirit with the Father 1 After sermon by the late Professor Barbour of Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. and Son, as the bond of Christian Unity and also of diversity in Christian Unity. That which preserved the Christian Church in Europe against the assaults of heathenism was the solid and united front it was able to present compact in one mighty organism, because it clearly grasped and steadfastly adhered to the essential idea of Church Unity outlined by St. Paul (Eph. 4:1-16). But when it lost sight of the other half of the truth--that while the Spirit is one there are diversities in the gifts of the Spirit; and in the place of diversity in unity tried to force uniformity upon the Christian world, the Catholic Church was split in two parts; one calling itself Roman, the other Protestant--and the truth of God was halved in the process of division. Truth in both, all the truth in neither; the truth the Romanist clings to and holds for all the world is the Unity of the Church; the truth the Pro...