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An everlasting hell is in the nature of things a contradiction, for the finite cannot eternally bar the way of the infinite reality whose uprising is the cause of its pain; if it could, it would itself be infinite, which is absurd. Sin is essentially the endeavour to live for the finite, the separative, the divisive, as opposed to the infinite, the whole-ward, the All.
New and divisive questions which lead only to faction are propounded so that the voters are confused. The great principle of Representative Government, on which the Republic was founded, is being attacked. Instead of choosing experienced men to direct public policy, there is an appeal to the passions of the mob. The result of all this agitation is an unsettlement that paralyzes business.
And many a good and necessary motion hath been accounted divisive, namely, such as proposed the necessity of confessing and forsaking sin.
In the heart of Europe, Germany still stands tragically divided. So is the whole continent divided. And so, too, is all the world. The divisive force is International Communism and the power that it controls. The designs of that power, dark in purpose, are clear in practice. It strives to seal forever the fate of those it has enslaved. It strives to break the ties that unite the free.
Catholicism and Protestantism had reached a tacit working agreement as to their spheres of influence and were even beginning to fraternize a little. The divisive force of Protestantism seemed to have spent itself. Since Alexander Campbell dead now for a decade and a half no Protestant sect of any importance had been established.
When you examine these rumors closely, you will observe that every one of them bears the same trade-mark "Made in Germany." We must resist this divisive propaganda we must destroy it with the same strength and the same determination that our fighting men are displaying as they resist and destroy the panzer divisions.
"The one immutable factor in institutions," writes Professor Pollard, "is their infinite mutability." Almost all the divisive factors in Christendom are taken out of the past, by those who claim that a certain polity or creed or practice is that authoritatively prescribed for all time, by Christ Himself, or by His Spirit through His personally appointed apostles.
This done, the same economic motive which, while the capital remained in private hands, was a divisive influence tending to destroy that public spirit which is the breath of life in a democracy became the most powerful of cohesive forces, making popular government not only ideally the most just but practically the most successful and efficient of political systems.
When the tide is out, the little rock-pools on the shore lie separated by stretches of slimy weeds, but the great sea, when it rushes up, buries the divisions, and unites them all. Our Christian unity is unity in Christ, and the only sure way 'to be of the same mind one toward another' is, that 'the mind which was in Christ Jesus be in us also. II. The divisive power of selfish ambition.
"The plan of federal union will have this result, that after it shall have been in operation for a term of years, the importance of divisive names and creeds and methods will pass more and more into the dim background of the past and acquire, even in the particular denomination itself, a merely historical value, and the churches then will be ready for, and will demand, a more complete union; so that what was the 'United Churches of Christ in America' can become the 'United Church of Christ in America, and a real ecclesiastical power, holding and administering ecclesiastical property and funds of such united church."
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