We come again, then, to an attempt to formulate adequate definitions of "Church" and "Sect." Quite evidently such formulation at this point must be tentative. One of the things learned in recent years has been precisely that fact: to be tentative, indeed hesitant, about using words as heavily charged with emotion and explosive content as "THE Church" and "THAT Sect." But following this brief review of recent experience in another land, one where the shift from monochromatic pattern to pluralism highlights the issues more clearly than elsewhere, it might be possible to venture certain propositions:

1. A Church exists where Jesus Christ is recognized as Lord and Saviour, where a common life is fashioned under the governance of the Holy Spirit, where the major disciplines of the Apostolic Church obtain. On the other hand sectarianism commands where some other teaching, some novel or temporal restriction, some marginal rule, some other human personality, is made central and thereby usurps the place of the Divinity.

2. The Church is re-discovered in the midst of variety through prayerful discussion looking toward a consensus. For our dividedness is a common sin. A sect is a body which through pride or pretence will not participate in prayerful quest for guidance out of our sinful and offensive condition. Practically speaking, the authenticity of a religious body's universalism is evidenced by its relation to the Ecumenical Movement.

3. The Church in essence is unchanging and holds steadfast to the promise of His coming. It is a covenant which crosses cultural, racial, linguistic and national barriers, and also the line of life and death between generations (thus we confess "the communion of saints"). Sectarianism submits to the particularism, the provinciality, of nation or generation or cultural tradition, to the extent of making a diaphora definitive. This raises a serious doubt concerning establishments, whether national in limitation or socio-economic. The Free Church is Church, then, not because a spurious notion of natural freedom is injected into the congregation, but because she has the mobility to effect a more perfect obedience to her Lord.