A number of years ago, during an extended period of labor in Belfast, North Ireland, I regularly visited some of the many bookstalls in the city which displayed used volumes. While almost casually browsing one day, I spied a book of which I had frequent-ly heard but had never seen. It was titled Union, or, The Divided Church Made One. The author was John Harris, and the original purchaser had inscribed his name and the date of purchase on the flyleaf. The date was March 5, 1867. I purchased the book for a shilling, which was then valued at twelve cents in our coinage.
It was a rare find and I read the book through that night, underlining statements which impressed me with their truth and factuality. I have since read the volume twice more and it is now quite marked up. One quotation I wish to share with you is found on page 21, where the author is writing about the cross of Jesus.
His cross, like the ark in the wilderness, is the center around which his people are to encamp; so that they cannot separate into factions, or withdraw from each other, without retiring at the same time from the presence of the cross.
As you read my own book you will be constantly aware that this is the point I am trying to make. Our relationship with the Father of mercies is created and maintained through faith in Jesus as the Son of God. It was the cross which established beyond doubt how far God was willing to go to end alienation and pride and reconcile us unto Himself. And it is the cross which makes possible that marvelous sharing of eternal life which is called "the fellowship" in our English versions of the divine revelation.
Fellowship is not conditioned upon orthodoxy of opinion, uniformity in knowledge, or conformity in thought. The only unity possible to thinking men and women is unity in diversity. Conformity is possible only for robots or mechanical men, although slaves in their hopeless servility may approach unto it. Free men can be one only in Christ, and the deeper they go in their relationship to Him, the closer will be their relationship to one another.
To justify division in the family of God, which is never once sanctioned by the holy scriptures, those scriptures must be wrested, twisted and distorted. It has been my intention to honestly and humbly investigate some of the passages which have been cruelly misapplied and return them to their proper context where they will encourage us to produce "the peaceable fruits of righteousness" rather than the bitter and depressing harvest of heartache and sorrow which has been our lot for so long.
Much of what is said will be universally applicable to believers in Christ, regardless of the names on the signboards behind which they meet. But the perceptive reader will soon recognize that I have addressed my remarks primarily to conditions existing in a certain segment of a historical restoration attempt, listed in the United States Census Bureau of Religious Statistics under the denomination Church of Christ. The movement of which this is one of the branches was launched as "a project to unite the Christians in all of the sects." That it is now the most divided movement on the con-temporary scene is not so much due to an abandonment of the scriptures as to the twisting of them to perpetuate "a System" which is confused with and substituted for the reconciling community purchased by the blood of Jesus.
--W. Carl Ketcherside