Have you secluded yourself behind party walls so that no one can have fellowship with you unless he consents to come within those walls? Have you practically made a fellowship of your own by acknowledging none—with rare exceptions.—but those who assemble at particular meetings? When a Christian comes to one of your meetings and would like to remember the Lord with you, and is known to some in your midst, do you give him or her a back seat because there is a difference of view as to baptism, or because he does not frequent one of your meeting rooms, or for some other reason not mentioned in the scriptures we have been considering?

I am no advocate for the slipshod way that would dispense with all barriers, and allow anybody, whether known or unknown, who claimed the right to partake of the Lord's Supper, to come and do so unquestioned, and unchallenged. Such carelessness, if not utter indifference to the Lord's honour, is inexcusable, living as we do in a day when evil men and seducers are on every hand. But where an individual is known, and his whole bearing and speech gain our confidence at once, to refuse such an one is simply to proclaim ourselves a sect. Scripture knows nothing of membership of your meeting. If you meet as Christians, the visitor in question takes his or her place as one of you.

To receive such is to own the truth of the "one body," to keep the unity of the Spirit, and at the same time raise the strongest protest possible against all sectarianism. 

Dear brethren, what does all this mean but that certain meetings have become everything to certain believers. There is a church within a church; and half a dozen of them; a fellowship within a fellowship; as well as a membership ab extra to the body of Christ. And, worse and more terrible in its consequences than anything, belonging to your meetings becomes the allimportant thing. Church fellowship with all its privileges, as well as keeping the unity of the Spirit, become identified in your minds with a certain set of meetings. Every single thing is judged from that standpoint. You have a group of meetings before you and your estimate of every person and all that relates to them is according to whether he or she belongs to that group. A more false, misleading, illusory criterion could hardly be imagined 

The fact is, brethren do not seem to see that the claim of any one of these "circles" to represent the fellowship of the Church of God exclusively, and to express the unity of the Spirit, is nothing short, when stripped to its naked meaning, of a claim to be the Church. Everyone must come to them to be in fellowship, and everyone who does not is denying the unity.Was there then no fellowship before, and no unity of the Spirit ? If there was not, by what marks can we distinguish the right fellowship from the wrong, among the multitude of different aspirants to this unique honour of having at last, after sixteen centuries of darkness and chaos, rescued these precious and glorious realities, and made them facts-once more? But surely every thoughtful and intelligent mind will admit that there has always been Christian fellowship and the unity of the Spirit, however dimly apprehended and imperfectly realised. 

It may be asked, What, then, were Brethren raised up for ? Is not the answer simple ? Not to form any new fellowship, or any new Church, but to make it possible for Church fellowship and the true unity of the children of God to find some more real expression.

When a company in any locality refuses to recognise another company of Christians who call upon the Lord, and seek to walk in obedience to His commands, as far as they have light—this is independency. When you see six or more companies of the Lord's people standing apart in rigid isolation, one from the other, this is independency. Independency, according to scripture, is to treat other members as if they were not of the body, and to say, "I have no need of thee." I know people who are guilty of this, quibble, and say, We embrace all the children of God, and would like them to be with us. Yes, of course you would, and a very big "us" it would make. "An available mount of communion," and you the mount. But this is putting something in place of the Church, and worse still, in place of Christ.