" making and then enforcing the standards of
creeds, has done violence to the conscience of both the clergy and
the laity. Conscienceless persons subscribe to the creed without any
particular hesitation, but the truly conscientious suffer the greatest
embarrassment They must either refuse altogether and withdraw from
all connection, or else subscribe with a mental reservation amounting
practically to hypocrisy.

[Sidenote: Inflexible character]

This inflexible character of the sect institution has been a most
fruitful cause for the production of new sects. No matter how
spiritual the movement at its beginning, when its leaders were not
longing for church power but were earnestly preaching the Word of
the Lord as it came unto them, as soon as the sect machinery was
thoroughly organized and was set in motion the inevitable tendency has
been to throw around the movement a wall of creedal and ecclesiastical
exclusiveness which shut out other true people of God; and then
began a process of crystalization which ever afterwards precluded the
unfolding of new truth. It is a well-known fact that the high tide of
truth-discovery in every religious movement in Protestantism has
been at the time of its beginning. A fixed law of immobility has ever
afterwards prevailed. The reason is clear: whenever men grasp the
reins of government and assume those prerogatives which belong to God
alone, the rule of the Spirit ends. The unfolding of new truths by
the operation of the Spirit is impossible within the limits of the
old order where human ecclesiasticism reigns. But truth can not be
permanently suppressed. If it can not find room for development
within the existing order of things, God will raise up men who
will, independently, proclaim the Word of the Lord. This he has done
repeatedly, only to have the new movements end in the same manner--in
a rule of human ecclesiasticism.

Human ecclesiasticism has always been the greatest barrier to the free
spiritual development of the work of Christ. According to that relic
of the papal church, authority and rule is vested in the clerical
corporation and is by them conferred upon other individuals by the
act of ordination. How different the standard of the Word! In the Old
Testament times the office of prophet did not come in the priestly
line, but on whomsoever the spirit of prophecy descended--whether upon
Amos, the herdsman, or David, the king--he spake as he was moved by
the Holy Ghost.