The need of a healing message for the divisions of Protestantism was discussed in our last. Some of the doctrines over which Protestantism was divided and is still divided, were named. It needed but the statement; for all recognize the facts. We did not name the scores, nay hundreds, of sects and denominations into which Protestants are divided. We have not space so to do, and all know more or less of the facts. There are more than a hundred named in America in books of statistics. Did not God rightly denominate the general condition “Babylon,”—“Confusion”? Is it not confusing to the man in the wilderness who would do God’s will, and would find the true church? If he be naturally of doubtful heart and inquiring mind, how confusing to him it must indeed be. How contradictory to the Saviour’s prayer: “That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.” John 17:21. His people are not yet one. They are divided in Babylon. Their testimony is for confusion, for Babylon, not for Christ and life-oneness. “We would have healed Babylon” is the Lord’s message. His Gospel in the Reformation would have wrought this healing if His word had been taken as the one standard of truth. The Reformation churches not only thought the word insufficient, and therefore formed human creeds; but they thought the power of the Spirit of God insufficient, and sought the aid of earthly powers. As James Bryce sets it down in his “Holy Roman Empire:” “The principles which led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church should have taught them to BEAR WITH THE OPINION OF OTHERS, and warned them from the attempt to CONNECT AGREEMENT IN DOCTRINE OR MANNER OF WORSHIP with the necessary forms of CIVIL GOVERNMENT. Still less ought they to have ENFORCED THAT AGREEMENT with CIVIL PENALTIES; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save when it was freely given. “But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that, finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they WELCOMED ALL THE AID A TEMPORAL PRINCE COULD GIVE, the result was that religion, or, rather, RELIGIOUS CREEDS, BEGAN TO BE INVOLVED WITH POLITICS MORE CLOSELY THAN HAD EVER BEEN THE CASE BEFORE. Through the greater part of Christendom, wars of religion raged for a century or more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the state, and MAINTAINED THE DESPOTIC SYSTEM OF THE MIDDLE AGES, while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland, imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and KEPT UP THE PRACTISES OF MEDIEVAL INTOLERANCE without their justification. “Therefore the INTOLERANCE OF PROTESTANTS, if the forms it took were less cruel than those practised by the Roman Catholics, was also FAR LESS DEFENSIBLE; for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives of political expediency, or more often the mere headstrong passion of a ruler or a faction, to silence the expression of any opinions but their own.” —“Holy Roman Empire,” Chap. 18. The result to the European churches generally was a lapse into dead formalism with all its inconsistent state relationship and its intolerance. A mighty uplift came through the freedom engendered in the new-opening, great Republic of the West. Previous to this, the preaching of the Wesleys, Whitefield, the Friends, the Baptists, and others set the religious world to thinking and made possible the era of American freedom, which definitely began July 4, 1776, a forward movement, the influence of which became worldwide. It was in God’s providence an opportunity for working out the principles of freedom in both church and state apart from king or pope. Gloriously it has succeeded so far as it has gone. But it brought over the Old World creeds, and added new. To bring healing the great Gospel message with the proclamation of the impending judgment, was given to the world, beginning with 1844. That message, if it had been received whole-heartedly by the Protestant churches, would have healed all their divisions. Errors in teaching and organization would have sloughed off, and left the church on the peerless platform of eternal truth, radiant in the righteousness of God. If a tribe of people are sick with a deadly disease, and a skilled physician comes bringing the only sure remedy, yet the people refuse to receive it or apply it, they will in that very thing pass the crisis to the wrong side, and unquestionably the disease will prove fatal. When the healing message came to Protestant Babylon and Protestant Babylon as a whole rejected that message, a moral fall was inevitable. It was but repeating the history of Israel before and after the Babylonian captivity, the history of the early church, and of the Reformation churches. It is because of this rejection that the second part of that great threefold message follows: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Rev. 14: 8. It is the divine, sorrowful statement of what follows the rejection of the healing remedy. Babylon prefers to remain with the errors, to retain the unlawful connection with the world, deemed fornication. With this sin Babylon has corrupted the world. What must inevitably follow such decision?—This: Just as the primitive church, when backslidden, turned to the world and committed fornication with the civil powers, just as the Reformation churches of Europe refused to follow the word, formed creeds, and made alliances, so the last phase of Babylon, rejecting God’s healing power and choosing her own way, is bound to seek the aid of the state to uphold her dogmas, and thus form anew the intolerant church-and-state regime denominated in Holy Writ the “beast” power. Furthermore, there will be human attempts at union on the thing or things upon which there is agreement, and that will constitute the mark of this federated church-and-state power. Therefore follows the third part of the great message, warning all of the awful results of yielding to that organization which has been built up contrary to and ultimately in defiance of God’s plan. “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” Rev. 14: 9-11. What do we see in fulfilment of this prophecy?—We see all Protestantism so-called federating, not merely to forward evangelistic work, but to influence the government to demand certain legislation, chief of which is the establishment of Sunday as the religious sabbath, contrary to the Bible Sabbath, contrary to every principle of religious freedom. The great healing message would have corrected this. That message demands the fear and worship of God the Creator, the memorial of whom is the holy Sabbath of the seventh day. The holiest worship we can render God is service. Matt. 4:10. The truest service is the doing of what He says. Luke 6:46. Fearing God, giving Him glory, worshiping Him, would inevitably lead to the keeping of all His commandments, including the Sabbath of the Bible. God warns against the counterfeit, and the world-wide federation which would enforce it as the true. To fail to heed the warning is to incur the awful consequences. [What it means to follow the healing message will be studied in our next.]