Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PURPOSE OF THE PIONEERS. The church was divided. The spirit of sectarianism was rampant. Among the people of God there was no co-operation in evangelistic work. Party was superior to Christ in the thoughts and efforts of multitudes who bore his name. The mission of the church, as a result, was not fulfilled. Men were passing into eternity without the good hope of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The hearts of the men named in the last chapter were grieved. They were good men. Their bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit. They loved God. They loved men. For the salvation of the lost they had an earnest desire. They had learned from the Son of God that the union of believers must precede the conversion of the world. They learned this from his prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John. In this prayer Jesus said: " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may 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." It was for peace that Stone, McNemar,. Dunlavy, Marshall and Thompson, withdrew from the Synod. They were ablaze with evangelistic fervor. They were prominent and enthusiastic in the work of the revival, recently inaugurated. They rejoiced to have the cooperation of their brethren in other churches. They were determined that this good work should continue. But this could not be if there was strife. To avoid this was their purpose in declining to remain under the jurisdiction of the court by which they were being tried on a charge of neglecting, in their public ministry, the doctrines of the Standards—the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms. Peace, not. war, was their purpose. Their d... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.