It is clear then, that in order to be truly fathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, I personally must maintain, both in doctrine and in practice, the holiness and the purity that become God’s house forever, and I must also be in association with those who seek the same thing. Furthermore, besides this personal cleanliness and purity, there must also be the maintenance of that unity which the Spirit has formed, and which He maintains. The way in which public failure came in at first was by destroying united testimony to the name. For you will always find that the path of the faithful remnant connects itself with the character of the failure that has come upon the testimony.
The thought of the Lord Jesus was, that there should be on earth a united company, everywhere maintaining the reality of what God had set up. This is what we see in the history of the Church at the first. There was but one object moving all the Lord’s people, and this was to testify to the name of the Lord Jesus. Now this has been entirely broken up. That which was set up in unity is broken up into a thousand fragments, each having some peculiar testimony characterizing it, instead of only one as at the beginning. The outward testimony has failed, but those who seek to act for God are none the less bound to act in the spirit and integrity of that which the Holy Ghost thus at first set up. Not that we are to ignore the failure, or attempt any thing like restoration on a small scale. Such a proceeding would show an utter want of sense of the ruin which has come in, and of what is now due to God. It would also be to the great loss and detriment of our own souls, for we would lose all the value and comfort of those Scriptures specially given of God for times of failure.