THE AGE OF CONFEDERACIES.
THIS generation has been called the age of organization. Organization is everywhere. It is organized labor against organized capital. It is organized infidelity against an organized church. It is organized law against organized crime. It is club against club, society against society, league against league. If any great work is to be done, a new society must be organized. If a new reform arises, it demands a new organization. And even in those organizations which are working along the same lines, a spirit of rivalry issues oftentimes in great bitterness. But it is more than an age of organizations; it is an age of confederacies. Organizations are forming from organizations. The smaller are combined in some larger confederation or "union," till, through prominent persons, all these organizations are becoming, in one way or another, connected. This is preëminently true in the religious world. For instance, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union includes in its membership women from most of the churches of the land. This is also true of the Y. M. C. A., and the Y. P. S. C. E., and the American Sabbath Union. From a worldly point of view all these organizations are legitimate and proper. Men have the right to tie themselves up in as many organizations as they wish so far as their fellow-men are concerned. And in some of these things union is strength. But from a Bible view this multiplication of organizations and confederations is weakening to moral force and is wrong. It is weakening because it is wrong. In the first place, so many organizations render the machinery of the church and its societies—inferior and, sometimes, superior—ponderous and unwieldy. It takes all the power of the church to run the machinery. It takes all of its available talent in its low spiritual state to run the societies. The average old-fashioned member gets lost in the maze of initial letters, and settles down to do nothing. These societies weaken the church by developing unbalanced church members. God wants to develop four-square Christians, all-around men and women, who can visit the sick if need be, albeit they are not on the "visiting committee," who can sew or buy garments for the poor if they are not in the Dorcas Society, who can observe and work for the Sabbath if they do not belong to a Sabbath union, who can be temperate and labor to promote temperance, lift up the drunkard, raise the fallen, even though they do not belong to some temperance organization, who130can be benevolent without belonging to some benevolent society, who can joyfully labor for others without joining a missionary society. In short, God wants full-grown Christians, shining with full-orbed light, ready for every good word and work. But these organizations make specialists, wonderfully brilliant in some particular line, but very striking failures many times in work that every Christian ought to know how to do. The ultimate success of such specialists may well be questioned. They develop a class as one-sided as themselves, and thereby weaken the church. The human is put in place of the divine. All that is godly legitimate for those societies to do the church can do. These organizations do not furnish one single talent which is not already in the church. They do not add to the power of the church. Many of them count as members those who are wholly of the world, and who bring the spirit of the world into the church. Friendship with the world is still enmity against God. Another thing which shows the wickedness of this organizing craze is that the great majority of them take all the glory to themselves, or their human leaders, and do not ascribe it, except in an indifferent way, to the great Giver of all good, from whom all power and help must come. The organization not only shuts out Christ, but, as before remarked, it unites with it oftentimes worldly elements which are directly opposed to the Spirit and work of Christ. Many of the organizations are formed for the very purpose of securing the coöperation of the world, and the result is that the world secures the coöperation of the members of the church in opposing the work of Christ. The reason for this much organization is ostensibly to secure union. The organizations and associations before named were for the purpose of securing unity in Christian work. But this no organization will ever do. No association of men and women as such forms true Christian union. The W. C. T. U. is an organization, not a Christian union. The American Sabbath Union is a confederacy of churches, not a union even in respect to the Sabbath of the Lord. And the formation of all these organizations hinders true union instead of helping it. There are order and organization in God's work, which grow out of true Christian union, but true Christian union never grows out of human organizations. The formation of these organizations is designed to do good, and those who start them are sincere. They see great dangers ahead, mighty forces of evil to meet, perils impending over humanity and nations, and the only hope to them is to "organize" against these great evils. Because of the terrible fear of coming, impending dangers these extra church combinations, associations, and confederacies exist. They are formed to meet the fear. And because they are growing in number, interlocking and interlacing, and so obtaining political power, they are expected to meet successfully these evils. The American Sabbath Union is a confederation to meet by human means Sabbath desecration. These very organizations will be found at last—are found already—fighting against God and persecuting his people. The only true union is union with God through Jesus Christ our Lord by means of the truth of God. A true union is a union of truth. It knows no compromise. It is primarily union with God. The bond of that union is Christ Jesus. All souls who are in Christ are thus bound together by Christ; as Jesus prayed for his disciples of every age: "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be one in us" (and the effect of this union on the world is thus shown): "that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Read John 17. This is Christian union; there is no other. Those who are thus united with Christ may with triumph say to those confederated against them:— "Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak the word, and it shall not stand; for God is with us." Isa. 8:9, 10. And the reason why they can thus speak is that they have followed the counsel of God given in the same connection—a solemn warning against all such confederacies:— "For the Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me, that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread." He who is truly united with God has all of God's power to meet all evils in God's way. All organization which grows out of such union will give all the glory to God.