C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Denominationalism
Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriæ of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine, and the sustaining corn.
O for less of an abstract, controversial Christianity, and more of a living, loving, personal Christ.
It is not the actual differences of Christian men that do the mischief, but the mismanagement of those differences.
I do not want the walls of separation between different orders of Christians to be destroyed, but only lowered, that we may shake hands a little easier over them.
Sects differ; but, with few exceptions they agree not only that a life of unselfish love will insure heaven, but that repentance and faith are the way by which one enters into this path of life.
God grant that we may contend with other churches as the vine with the olive, which of us shall bear the best fruit; but not as the brier with the thistle, which of us shall be most unprofitable.
It is neither possible nor desirable to make all men think alike. Variety is the very basis of harmony; and, in the sphere of ecclesiastical experience, oneness of feeling is vastly preferable to unanimity of belief. The voice of God, however, as uttered in the events and experiences of the past hundred years, enjoins upon the private membership of the church the culture of that “unity of the Spirit” which is begotten of the Holy Ghost, and which derives from its Divine Author the life in which it resides, the elements of which it is composed, and the impulses under which it acts.
Were we all one body, we should lose the tremendous stimulation that comes from the present arrangement, and I fear that our uniformity would become the uniformity of death and the tomb.
If God allows us to remain Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopalian, it may be on account of the unconverted, that they may be without excuse; that every type of man may be confronted with a corresponding type of doctrine and of method. Surely there are means adapted to your state, and ministries fitted to your peculiar temperament.