of the spirit. This debasing
of the motive of church work is naturally attended by a debasement of
the means employed. The competitive church resorts to strange business
devices to secure its needed revenue. "He that giveth" is induced to
give, not "with simplicity," but with a view to incidental advantages,
and a distinct understanding is maintained between the right hand and
the left. The extent and variety of this influence on church life in
America afford no occasion for pride, but the mention of them could not
rightly be omitted. It remains for the future to decide whether they
must needs continue as an inevitable attendant on the voluntary system.

Sectarian divisions tend strongly to perpetuate themselves. The starting
of schism is easy and quick; the healing of it is a matter of long
diplomatic negotiations. In a very short time the division of the
church, with its necessary relations to property and to the employment
of officials, becomes a vested interest. Provision for large expenditure
unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the general interests of the
kingdom of Christ, which had been instituted in the first place at heavy
cost to the many, is not to be discontinued without more serious loss to
influential individuals. Those who would set themselves about the
healing of a schism must reckon upon personal and property interests to
be conciliated.

This least amiable characteristic of the growth of the Christian church
in America is not without its compensations. The very fact of the
existence, in presence of one another, of these multitudinous rival
sects, all equal before the law, tends in the long run, under the
influence of the Holy Spirit of peace, to a large and comprehensive
fellowship.[404:1] The widely prevalent acceptance of existing
conditions as probably permanent, even if not quite normal, softens the
mutual reproaches of rival parties. The presumption is of course
implied, if not asserted, in the existence of any Christian sect, that
it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that
than other sects; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the
right and true must, in the long run, prevail. But it is only with a
high act of faith, and not as a matter of reasonable probability, that
any sect in America can venture to indulge itself in the expectation of
a supremacy, or even a predominance, in American Christendom. The
strongest in numbers, in influence, in prestige,