nt can not fail to
discern the same type of government in the church before the rise of
human ecclesiasticism. The first preachers of the gospel spoke with
an authority not derived from a human source. When Peter and John were
threatened before the Council and commanded not to speak or teach in
the name of Jesus Christ, they gave the sublime answer: "Whether it
be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God,
judge ye. For we can not but speak the things which we have seen and
heard" (Acts 4: 19, 20). The same principle stands out in bold relief
in the experience of Paul. Although that great apostle was forward
to cooperate with other apostles and ministers of Christ, one can
not fail to see that his whole career exemplified the principle of
theocracy. He "was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."

[Sidenote: An important parallelism]

Permit me to call attention particularly to an important parallelism
between the government of Israel under the theocracy and the
government of the New Testament church before the rise of
ecclesiasticism. God led his people out of Egypt by Moses and Joshua.
These men are a type of Christ, who leads his people. After the
Israelites were settled in Canaan, they had no central government,
but each locality or city was autonomous, having its local judges or
elders. In a time of crisis God raised up a judge to lead the people
in the necessary cooperative efforts to preserve or regain their
liberties. Their miseries Were always the result of their own sins,
not a failure of the divine form of government. Their appointing a
king and thus setting up a centralized human government was called
_rejecting God as ruler_. And this is exactly parallel with what
ecclesiasticism has done and is doing with the same results. God's
government of the church is set aside and rejected.

[Sidenote: Not church federation]

Nor will an organic union of all the sects solve the problem of
unity. In the first place, the tendency of such a union is toward
imperialism, the creation on the federation plan of another
world-church. In the second place, such a federation would strengthen
rather than lessen the authority of human rule, while the compromises
necessary to make such a project possible would lessen in the same
degree that freedom of the Spirit by which alone the full gospel can
be given to the world. And in the third place, such a federation would
not be the church of God, for the