70 CHURCH UNITY 



Corinth, the idea is the Church general, so 

 far as realized or manifested in this or that 

 place. The Church, as viewed by the 

 New Testament writers, is not a compos- 

 ite affair, made up of diverse parts, but a 

 single, rounded totality with many facets. 

 These facets are the local churches. 



This grand, primitive view of the Church, 

 as a seamless total, an indivisible whole, 

 continued in the thought of thoughtful 

 Christians until the Reformation. There 

 were sects, of course ; but most of these, if 

 not all, had the consciousness of sects, mani- 

 festing their respect for the principle of 

 unity by contending for the title of ortho- 

 doxy. Each thought itself right, and would 

 put down the rest. We have before the 

 Reformation no spectacle of various Chris- 

 tian bodies differing in faith and practice, 

 yet tolerant of one another, and in some 

 sort glad of one another's success, as is the 

 case with the Methodist and the Presby- 

 terian laity to-day. Denominationalism is a 

 product of post-Reformation times. Sects 

 were before the Reformation, denomina- 

 tions came after. 



A " sect " is, literally, a cut, a slice. It 

 implies out-and-out division, cleavage, re- 



