PROFESSED STANDING INCURS RESPONSIBILITY

^[p. 14] PROFESSED STANDING INCURS RESPONSIBILITY

It is not God’s way, I say it without hesitation, to allow any one to step down to a lower standing than the one he assumed to take, in order to escape the consequence of failure in the higher standing. I never encourage any one to take the standing that we have assumed to take; though I know that it is most blessed, and the only one for the witness. Yet, I tremble, and, if I dare, would dissuade some who essay to join with us. We seek to be overcomers, taking the van against all comers, desiring to gather all the saints out of the present confusion; but if they come, they must do as we ought to do, — with lusty sinews buffet the waves which are running high against us. Any one who takes the standing will be judged according to it. Lot takes the standing of Canaan, and is judged, not as if he were still in Mesopotamia, but as in Canaan. I treat Independents as Independents, but Brethren I do not treat as Independents, even when, in conduct and mind, they have degenerated to that. It is simply not God’s way to treat them as such. They themselves deny that they are independents, and it is only by force of an unwise amiability that you reduce them to the level of Independents, in order that you may be able to mete out to them a milder judgment. The trials and difficulties which in unbelief we try to avoid, we may be sure, are the very ones we shall fall into, and some day or other you will find that you must deal in discipline, on the ground of the assembly; and the difficulties which now you think you escape from, by reducing a company of saints avowedly on the ground of the assembly, to that of Independents, will not serve you at another time which your present laxity is sowing the seed of in your own borders nearer home. For if we would be faithful, and yet seek, and embrace a compromise where there is a demand on us to be faithful, God in His righteousness must make a much severer demand on us next time; for if He does not, we sink down into the ruins around us. It would be a much ^[p. 15] more difficult thing for B———— Street to act faithfully now than at first, like a Christian coquetting with the world, it is more difficult for him to renounce each day that he has not renounced it. You are bound to treat and deal with B———— Street on the ground on which it was formed. Israel is always dealt with on the ground of being Israel; and having taken true ground, it is plain I have no right to reduce them to the lower ground, which in moral declension they have sunk to, in order that I may exempt them from the discipline applicable to the ground on which they originally started. That would be virtually rewarding them for their declension.... Do not be afraid to be a porter in God’s house to see that no unclean person should enter.