"In the present time it is part of God's ways to preserve likewise an afflicted and poor people who trust in His name. Such will be characterized by loving devoted-ness to Christ, by brotherly kindness, by integrity of heart, by the endeavor to maintain a conscience void of offence toward God and man, by holding fast the faithful Word, by not denying the name of the Lord, by consistent testimony to the world and the world-church for the absent One now rejected, by separation from evil, by following "righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure (or single) heart." This is the "original ground of gathering." This is Philadelphian position. This alone constitutes a true remnant company. Such a path can only be maintained in the energy of faith. Nature can form a confederacy of assemblies based on mutual acceptance of certain guiding principles, or the bowing to assembly-judgments; but this is not faith, and only results in the formation of a system as rigid and unscriptural as any of the sects of men. It does away with individual exercise of conscience, and substitutes the voice of the church for the voice of God in His Word. -From "Notes on Zephaniah," by H. A. Ironside.