their local relationship: they belonged by divine right with whichever
company of believers they happened to be associated. Nothing more than
simple recognition of what God had done for them and the according
to them of the local rights and privileges that naturally belonged
to them was necessary on the part of a local congregation to make the
actual union complete.

The wrong conception of the constitution of the church necessarily
required another standard of church-membership. When _church_ came
to signify merely a group of congregations consolidated under a
centralized human headship possessing administrative, legislative, and
judicial functions (so organized as to distinguish it from all other
organized groups or congregations), simple membership in Christ was
insufficient to mark the convert with the stamp of denominational
individuality. Salvation itself made no one a member of a church
fashioned according to the kingdoms of this world. Consequently
another standard of membership was necessary, a standard which
required acceptance of and conformity to the self-made rules and
regulations of that foreign society called a church. And when these
earth-born institutions became identified in the public mind with
the real church of Christ and membership in them became confused with
membership in the true church of God, the natural result was that
millions complied, in a formal manner at least, with the conditions of
the counterfeit church membership who never knew what it meant to be
vitally joined to Christ. In this we see the "evil" fruit which grew
on that tree of error. The multitudes that have been by this means
deceived with the thought that they were Christians, only to be lost
at last, will not be known until that awful day of final reckoning.

[Sidenote: Divisive nature of the creeds]