DECEMBER 5TH, 1894

DECEMBER 5TH, 1894

The question of the previous meeting (brothers’ reading) came up, the point being to know where we are and why we are there. I maintained that the existence of a fellowship as distinguished from actual coming together in assembly was what really marked us off from Bethesda. who. by the course they took at ^[p. 97] Bethesda, repudiated the idea of fellowship. Further, that the original and only possible ground of fellowship here is that of calling on the name of the Lord, the obverse being the fellowship of His death; that the difference now is that as it is incumbent on every one that “names the name of the Lord to withdraw from iniquity”, we now have to look for those “that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”. The truth of the one body I hold to be light and privilege for those gathered in fellowship, and it is realised in our being together in assembly. I do not know that anything was advanced against it save that the one body was said to be a bond of fellowship, a sort of ecclesiastical formation, in which case I maintained that we should be a sect.