BX 8 .A4 
 
 Ainslie, Peter, 1867-1934. 
 If not a united church — 
 what? 
 
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 in 2017 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/ifnotunitedchurcOOains_0 
 
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If Not a United Church — What? - 
 
THE CHRISTIAN UNITY HANDBOOK SERIES 
 
 Edited by Peter Ainslie, D.D. 
 
 announcement 
 
 There is a wide-spread weariness of the present 
 forms of religion as expressed by all the bodies of 
 Christendom. Consequently we are to look for 
 new paths whereby the will of God and the soul 
 hunger may be satisfied. As a contribution to 
 this end the Christian Unity Handbook Series 
 offers for heart-searching consideration the pro- 
 posals for a united Christendom, discussed with- 
 out reservation in brief handbooks by those of va- 
 rious communions and of various nationalities who 
 have given study to this whole field of doing the 
 will of God for this generation and satisfying the 
 present day soul hunger, believing that in the 
 passion for the unity of Christendom is to be 
 found a definite step toward the solution. 
 
 The next volume following this will be by 
 his Grace, the Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan 
 Sbderblom. 
 
y 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN UNITY HANDBOOK SERIES 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 If Not a United 
 
 Church— What? 
 
 / 
 
 The Reinicker Lectures at the 
 Protestant Episcopal Theo- 
 logical Seminary in Virginia 
 
 PETER ^INSLIE 
 
 Editor of "The Christian Union Quarterly" 
 Author of "Christ or Napoleon — Which} ” etc. 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1920, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street 
 
Foreword 
 
 T hese lectures were first delivered from 
 notes at the Protestant Episcopal Theo- 
 logical Seminary in Virginia on the 
 Reinicker Foundation. They have been deliv- 
 ered on other occasions and each time additions 
 have been made to them. After a longer time 
 than I anticipated I undertook writing them out 
 as they appear in this volume. Necessarily there 
 are omissions and additions, but the original out- 
 lines are preserved. They aspire to be only a 
 voice — another voice — amid the many that are 
 being sounded forth for the unity of the Church 
 of Christ. 
 
 Baltimore, Md. 
 
 P. A. 
 
I 
 
 
 \ 
 
 'J i^'r, 
 
 .-■f, K'' ^ 
 
Contents 
 
 I. 
 
 Christian Unity: Its Necessity 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 Christian Unity ; Its Growth 
 
 . 40 
 
 III. 
 
 Christian Unity : Its Outlook 
 
 • 70 
 
 
 Appendix : . . . . 
 
 . 104 
 
 I. The Call for a World Conference on Faith 
 
 and Order by the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. 
 
 II. Association for the Promotion of Christian 
 
 Unity. 
 
 III. The Second Interim Report of the British 
 
 Committee, 
 
 IV. The Call for a Conference on Organic Union 
 
 of the Evangelical Protestant Bodies in 
 America by the Presbyterian Church in 
 the U. S. A. 
 
 V. The Call from the Scandinavian Churches. 
 
 VI. The Interchurch World Movement of North 
 
 America. 
 
 VII. Touring in the Interest of Christian Unity. 
 
 VIII. Organizations for the Promotion of Christian 
 
 Unity. 
 
 IX. A Bibliography on Christian Unity. 
 
I 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY: ITS NECESSITY 
 
 ^ g AHE greatest necessity of modern times » 
 I is the unity of the Church of Christ.* 
 JL No other issue exceeds it in importance. ^ 
 Nevertheless we have been so accustomed to, 
 think in terms of a divided Christendom that we » 
 find ourselves to-day not only still involved in the * 
 multiplicity of divisions, but facing the difficult . 
 task both of finding a way to think in terms of a • 
 united Christendom and of being Christian to all • 
 other Christians. Next in importance to the* 
 coming of Christianity into the world is the at- * 
 taining of Christianity unto unity for the comple-» 
 tion of the work of Christ on earth. If in the 
 first period love to and faith in God were estab- 
 lished, in the second period love of and faith in 
 one’s fellows must likewise be established else all 
 expressions of the two great ^mmandments are 
 both inharmonious and false."* The integrity and 
 glory of Christ are so involved by a divided 
 Christendom that the Church is under necessity 
 of shifting her base in seeking to preserve her 
 honour, now so divided, obscured and defiled, and 
 * I John 4:20. 
 
 II 
 
12 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT ! 
 
 of finding a base upon which the honour of 
 Christ is made primary. The Church has dis- 
 covered other sins and scourged them from her 
 portals. We of this day must not be afraid to 
 face the sin of a divided Christendom and ex- 
 press repentance in our change of mind toward 
 the will of God in the unity of His Church, for 
 which Christ prayed and of which the Apostle 
 Paul urged that all should 
 
 “attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowl- 
 edge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto 
 the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” ’ 
 
 It is the challenge of the hour — the challenge 
 to each of us who has been enrolled in the fellow- 
 ship of Christ. I confess myself only a student 
 of this delicate and vital problem. I am trying 
 to find the way by conference with others of 
 other communions; by prayer for myself and 
 others, not that others may come to my point of 
 view or I to theirs, but that both may find the 
 truth; also by working side by side with others 
 as far as it is possible in the present state of divi- 
 sion; and by trying to think the thoughts of 
 Christ, Who Himself says, 
 
 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one 
 cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” ’ 
 
 • I. An awakened conscience is the first step 
 ■ toward a united Christendom. It has been so 
 long since division became an accepted condition 
 
 *Eph. 4:13. "John 14:6. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 13 
 
 of Christendom, and these divisions have been so 
 stoutly defended either in the rights of freedom 
 or in the condemnation of error, that we must 
 not think harshly of those who dissent from us in 
 our appeals for the unity of the Church. Equally^ 
 important with the most vital facts of Christen- , 
 dom is the great fact of brotherhood. Conse- ^ 
 quently we cannot take the first step toward each 
 other except it be in the attitude and patience of 
 brothers irrespective of theological dogmas or 
 decrees of ecclesiastical councils. 
 
 Because the Church is a divine institution it 
 must necessarily contain the elements of unity. 
 John Ruskin, in his “ Ethics of the Dust,” says, 
 
 “A pure and holy state of anything is that in which 
 all its parts are helpful or consistent. The highest 
 and the first law of the universe, and the other name 
 of life is therefore ‘ help.’ The other name of death is 
 ‘ separation.’ Government and cooperation are in all 
 things, and eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and 
 competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of 
 death.” 
 
 There is need of neither argument nor witnesses 
 to sustain this affirmation. The whole universe 
 declares it. Order, unity and harmony are in all ♦ 
 that God has made. You may look through the f 
 telescope into the clear midnight sky or through a 
 microscope into the perfumed heart of a flower 
 or into the delicately formed body of an insect, 
 and everywhere are order, imity and harmony. 
 Discord and defect indicate the presence of a 
 foreign element. The normal condition of the 
 
14 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 Church is unity. Disunion is immorality. If we 
 find something that is pushing us away from our 
 fellows, let us not deceive ourselves by thinking 
 that that something is religion. The fact is that 
 that something is irreligion, for religion funda- 
 mentally is the bond of kinship and love which 
 binds us together and to God. 
 
 Because of our inherent human friendliness 
 only a united Christianity can function for our 
 greatest need. It cannot be denied that natural 
 sociability and mutual advantage impel men to 
 unity. One of the purposes of Christianity is to 
 remove the barriers of discord and unfriendli- 
 ness, making it easy, permanent and spiritual for 
 men to come into a fellowship for which they 
 were created and out of which they are to develop 
 into the highest of earth’s products. Instead the 
 divisive condition of Christianity is defeating the 
 purpose of its existence, denying a principle that 
 is as fundamental as the belief that Jesus is the 
 Christ and making the impression that schism is 
 the order of heaven, which every one knows is 
 not true from his own natural desire for friend- 
 ship. 
 
 In a certain town there are four congregations 
 of Christians with their Church buildings within 
 two blocks of each other. All the lines of trade 
 in that town have formed cooperative organiza- 
 tions for mutual advantage. The overshadowing 
 divisive thing there is in the matter of religion. 
 The members of these four congregations meet 
 on a common level in business and at social func- 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 16 
 
 tions, but on reverting to Christianity all four are 
 aloof in their pride of history, tradition or Scrip- 
 tural interpretation. No man can say that such 
 a condition was the purpose of Christ in founding 
 His Church, nor the will of Christ in maintaining 
 His Church, unless his Christ is a creation of his 
 own mind for his particular party, as long ago 
 the ancients conceived their gods to suit their par- 
 ticular notions. Then both are idolaters — the 
 former no less an idolater than the latter, only 
 his phrasings are of the Christian complexion and 
 therefore more repugnant to brotherhood and im- 
 mortality. Frequently the opinions of these 
 Church people have been labeled as convictions. 
 Perhaps they would die for them and many 
 doubtless have done that, but such martyrdoms 
 add neither to the sanctity of the person nor the 
 cause. When one is able to classify in his own 
 thinking which are convictions and which are 
 opinions he forthwith needs to revise the former 
 and give liberty to the latter, if he desire adjust- 
 ment to the spiritual necessities of the times. 
 Convictions cannot be compromised with the idea 
 of permanency, but they can be revised, and every 
 life that is growing toward God is revising its 
 convictions constantly. No one is looking for 
 the unity of Christendom to come by the way of 
 compromised convictions, but the tragedy of 
 division is that it is maintained by compromise. 
 There is not a body in all Christendom — Greek 
 Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican or Prot- 
 estant — ^but has by its very existence compro- 
 
16 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 mised the Spirit of Christ. Now the question is 
 whether we are willing to guard our opinions 
 about this, that and the other to the last ditch of 
 our failure and continue compromising the Spirit 
 of Christ by division in the Church, or whether 
 we are willing to revise our convictions, sur- 
 rendering to the leadership of the Spirit and 
 thereby finding the way to the triumph of the will 
 of God among men. 
 
 There stand the friendly citizens of that little 
 town, however, separated by apparently impass- 
 able barriers, many bitterly sectarian, with per- 
 haps not more than a tenth of its Church mem- 
 bership (and let us wish it were less) that can 
 intelligently state why they are separated from 
 other Christians, and those statements would 
 have to do with such secondary matters regard- 
 ing the world’s redemption that in a few centuries 
 from now it will be a question as to which age of 
 our semi-civilization the religious views and prac- 
 tices of the twentieth century will be classified. 
 The condition of this certain town can be dupli- 
 cated in every city, town and rural community 
 around the globe from Damascus in Syria, with 
 its six different kinds of Christians, to the Green- 
 brier White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, 
 with its two little Church buildings nestling in the 
 valley of the Alleghanies and affirming that the 
 Church of Christ is divided. It is a world-wide 
 plague. The policy is false and therefore the 
 front which the Church presents is false. Thus 
 millions are hostile to the Church. They see no 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY ; ITS NECESSITY 17 
 
 advantage in its fellowship and are willing to go 
 alone without the Church. Which is to be pitied 
 most — the Church which has lost its way in sec- 
 tarian entanglements and therefore has become a 
 hindrance to the will of God among men, anni- 
 hilating itself by contradictory beliefs; or the 
 man who, in consequence of this condition, seeks 
 alone for the paths of fraternity, equality and 
 eternal life? 
 
 Because of the superficiality of modern Chris- 
 tianity there must come a Christian agnosticism 
 in the face of ultimate problems, which we can 
 never solve, to drive us away from our cheap 
 explanations, until the whole Church finds a vital 
 faith in God and the power of a crucified love — 
 these appear to be the paths extending before us, 
 exceeding in importance every other field of re- 
 search and presenting a task exceeding in great- 
 ness anything ever undertaken before by man. 
 We hear much about the undeveloped resources 
 of electricity, mineralogy and other sciences, but 
 the vastest undeveloped resources are in the do- 
 main of the uncharted and unsounded depths of 
 the spirituality of God and the human soul. We 
 have exploited to the limit hair-splitting defini- 
 tions of all terms in the realm of theology and 
 invented new terms to satisfy our philosophical 
 rovings. Upon these definitions have been estab- 
 lished most of the hard and fast divisions of 
 Christendom. While it is true that this practice 
 is not so common now as formerly, nevertheless 
 the results of this practice are still evident when 
 
18 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 you read the long list of the religious statistics 
 sent out by the United States Census Bureau. Is 
 this the occasion when it is said, 
 
 “He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh; 
 
 And the Lord will have them in derision ” ? ‘ 
 
 This condition leads each of the many Chris- 
 tian communions to believe that it is a law unto 
 itself — that because it is separated from others it 
 is accountable only to those with whom it is sepa- 
 rated — thereby dwarfing love, blighting brother- 
 hood and shattering the spiritual universe into as 
 many parts as there are parties and each building 
 up itself at the expense of pulling down what 
 Jesus came to establish. The time has come for 
 new discoveries. Action is already overdue. 
 
 • II. The present day crises demand a united 
 ♦Church. In the glare of the war we have been 
 able to see conditions as perhaps many of us have 
 not seen before. Antecedents present quite as 
 interesting a study as consequences, but we are 
 not so much concerned about where to put the 
 fault of division as to how to extricate ourselves 
 from denominational entanglements in order to 
 go upon our task in a world-wide witnessing of 
 Christ. Present conditions block the way. 
 
 The American Church presents serious diffi- 
 culties, especially in the rural districts. Accord- 
 ing to governmental statistics only forty-three per 
 cent, of the rural Churches in the United States 
 are growing, eighteen per cent, are stationary and 
 ’ Psalm 2:4. 
 
^CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 19 
 
 thirty-nine per cent, are losing. But if there were 
 no such alarming figures the issue would still be 
 the same, for the necessary conditions of a di- 
 vided Church in a rural community are disheart- 
 ening to the development of spirituality, irre- 
 spective of numerical growth. These conditions » 
 may be classed under three heads : ( i ) Duplica- , 
 tion of effort, (2) bad financiering, and (3) mag-, 
 nifying non-essentials, all of which contribute to t 
 the weakening of vital Christianity. If all of • 
 these conditions do not exist one would be enough 
 to seriously involve the teachings of Christ. 
 
 In a certain village of nearly eight hundred 
 people there are five Churches, each minister 
 working independently as though he were the 
 only minister in that community and duplicating 
 the work of the other three ministers, thereby 
 presenting an ugly and unspiritual front. In 
 financiering those five little Churches five home 
 missionary boards are sending experienced money 
 raisers throughout the country to raise money to 
 support these five ministers, for the good name of 
 the denomination is at stake. But with what the 
 missionary boards contribute in addition to what 
 each little congregation can raise there is a con- 
 stant deficit, so each congregation resorts to illicit 
 methods of raising money by having fairs, sup- 
 pers, etc., strangling at the outset the finest pos- 
 sibilities of spirituality which is vitally dependent 
 upon giving. One or two of these little Churches 
 will after while gain sufficiently in members to be 
 independent of the home missionary board, which 
 
20 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT t 
 
 is hailed as a denominational triumph. In course 
 of time all five may become independent of the 
 missionary boards. But this scandalous policy is 
 still there, only better established. With all these 
 frantic efforts the average salary of an American 
 minister is $636.00 — little more than the average 
 salary of the untrained blacksmith, which is 
 $537.00, little less than the average salary of the 
 untrained stableman, which is $689.00, and little 
 more than the average salary of the untrained 
 .carpenter, which is $603.00.* The small salary 
 weakens the minister’s best efforts in caring for 
 the spiritual needs of the congregation by the 
 necessary concern for his own family. 
 
 * But more. Each of these ministers must em- 
 . phasize his denominational peculiarities, whether 
 Roman Catholic or Protestant, such as customs 
 regarding the ordinances. Church polity, public 
 worship, etc., as though the salvation of the world 
 hung upon these things, and each saying so loud 
 to the other, “ a more excellent way show I unto 
 you,” that the way to Christ is obscured in the 
 controversies of the followers of Christ. The 
 result of all this is that non-essentials are given 
 primary place and vital Christianity is made sec- 
 ondary. In many instances it would be regarded 
 as a calamity, especially if he were a liberal con- 
 tributor or holding a high social position, for one 
 of the members in one of these little Churches 
 to transfer his membership to another of these 
 Churches because of a change in theological 
 
 1 These figures are based on the salaries of 1914: to- 
 day the salaries of the latter have doubled and tripled. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 21 
 
 viewpoint or for matrimonial or social reasons, 
 and it would perhaps cause more talk, and longer 
 talk, in this little village than if a sinner had been 
 won to Christ. Whatever else may happen each 
 denomination must hold its own ! I am told that 
 Abraham Lincoln became deeply concerned in the 
 matter of religion some years after his marriage. 
 On informing his wife that his choice of a 
 Church was other than her own, Mrs. Lincoln 
 cried all night. Next morning Mr. Lincoln in- 
 formed his wife that rather than cause her any 
 distress he would never identify himself with any 
 of the Churches, but would maintain his faith in 
 Christ as long as he lived. Whether this incident 
 in Mr. Lincoln’s life is true or not, his subsequent 
 history sustains it and there are multitudes of 
 instances that parallel it in nearly every commu- 
 nity where Christianity is known. The whole 
 programme is unfair both to Christ and the 
 people. 
 
 The city Church is not yet as seriously involved 
 as the rural Church, but it is approaching it and 
 the next decade may find it there, struggling for 
 existence against most contrary odds. The 
 larger a city the more difficult it is to get an 
 audience. In New York some of the most con- 
 secrated and brilliant men in the American pulpit 
 never preach to full houses. Indeed it is an ex- 
 ception which calls forth comment for a Church 
 in any of the large American cities to have a full 
 house at the evening service. Most of the large 
 American cities are becoming as heathen as India 
 
22 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 or China. The midweek services are being for- 
 saken in most of the city Churches and thirty to 
 sixty is being accepted as a satisfactory attend- 
 ance under present conditions, where the service 
 is not abandoned entirely. All sorts of schemes 
 of prizes and rivalries are being put forth in the 
 Sunday-school rather than the charm of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God to increase or even 
 hold the attendance. The public school does not 
 have to resort to such a policy. In comparing 
 the two one appears artificial and the other real. 
 Around public squares and on leading avenues 
 are found a great variety of Churches with every 
 possible theological interpretation — overcrowding 
 and overlapping — while in the poorer sections 
 there is a scarcity of Churches. Pride of de- 
 nomination has too frequently prevailed over con- 
 cern for the common good. In all these wealthy 
 residential centers of the city where great Church 
 buildings are crowded against each other in the 
 attempt, through pride of denomination, to outdo 
 the other, some bold hand must some day write 
 in letters of fire across every such Church door — 
 " Ichabod.” 
 
 The whole world has awakened to the needs 
 and possibilities of intellectual development as 
 never before in its history. Knowledge is power 
 and the intellect is given us for development, but 
 this intellectual development must come under the 
 power of Christianity. Not to speak of America 
 and Europe, but India is dotted with colleges and 
 universities. China is putting forth a great edu- 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 23 
 
 cational system, having 130,000 schools with an 
 attendance of approximately 4,500,000. She al- 
 ready has six universities and is now planning to 
 locate a university in the capital of every prov- 
 ince. The Imperial University of Japan is one 
 of the best educational institutions in the world. 
 In South America, Africa and the islands of the 
 sea educational institutions hold places of leader- 
 ship. All over the world there are constant ad- 
 justments of national educational systems in 
 order to reach every child for its intellectual de- 
 velopment, but education is not merely intellec- 
 tual development. Were it that alone it would 
 be the most dangerous force in a nation. So long 
 as religion receives a secondary place in educa- 
 tion, if a place at all, we must expect intellectual 
 development to be a power for evil as it was in 
 Greece and Rome. When they were highest in 
 intellectual development they were lowest in 
 morals. Italy was never worse than in the days 
 of the Renaissance. By the side of the revival 
 of classic learning arose vices that disgraced 
 mankind. Education is, as Nicholas Murray 
 Butler says in his “ Meaning of Education,” ” a 
 gradual adjustment to the spiritual possessions of 
 the race.” The chief of detectives of Baltimore 
 said to me that where it took one detective to 
 catch a crook forty years ago, it now takes ten, 
 which is due to superior intellectual development 
 of the average young man over former years. In 
 one department of criminality in the United 
 States — that of fraudulent use of the mails — of 
 
24 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 the 522 who were convicted, 106 were college 
 graduates and more than a dozen were the vale- 
 dictorians in their classes. 
 
 Education is not expressed in terms of intelli- 
 gence, but in terms of conduct and character. 
 The function which education has to discharge 
 is, according to Herbert Spencer, “ to prepare us 
 for complete living.” That cannot be done with- 
 out Christianizing all modern education. Above 
 all the teachers of ancient and modern times is 
 Jesus Christ, Whom the multitudes in the days of 
 His flesh called “Teacher” and for Whom the 
 multitudes still hunger. But His principles of 
 education cannot function through a secular or 
 denominational system. One is as disastrous as 
 the other. Because of the multiplicity of divi- 
 sions in Christianity the directors of secular sys- 
 tems have to be cautious sometimes to the extent 
 of exclusion of divided Christianity, however 
 friendly to Christ they may be. Therefore 
 Christ is held back from the place as teacher by 
 the divisions of His Church. Because no de- 
 nomination, Roman Catholic or Protestant, pos- 
 sesses the whole truth of Christianity, its systems 
 are defective, more or less, especially in empha- 
 sizing their denominational peculiarities over the 
 common good. We are facing the gigantic prob- 
 lem of Christianizing the education of the world 
 and it must be frankly acknowledged that a 
 divided Church cannot function in such a task. 
 Therefore the secular and the denominational 
 schools must come under the power of a imited 
 
CHEISTIAF UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 25 
 
 Christendom if Jesus is to have His rightful place 
 as the world’s teacher. 
 
 The ethnic religions are awakening to Chris- 
 tianity’s challenge of the right of supremacy to 
 teach. Both Buddhism and Islam are powerful 
 religions. Both are missionary in their policies. 
 Islam is planning to capture Africa by a chain of 
 mission stations across the continent and already 
 more than a dozen Buddhist temples dot the Pa- 
 cific coast of America. Lesser religions like 
 Shintoism and Confucianism are likewise proudly 
 claiming their divine right to teach. Buddhism 
 and Islam in particular are inaugurating systems 
 whereby whole nations may be held to their 
 faiths. They are training their children on the 
 models of Christian Sunday-schools. On the 
 occasion of the coronation of the Emperor of 
 Japan in 1915, 800 Buddhist Sunday-schools were 
 started with an enrollment of 120,000 children 
 and these figures have increased every month. 
 They have their Mothers’ Day, Children’s Day, 
 Young Men’s Buddhist Association, and in their 
 public worship they sing our Christian hymns, 
 substituting Buddha for Jesus. They have their 
 universities and some of the best educated men in 
 the world are in these ethnic religions. With all 
 their prestige and traditions it is nevertheless be- 
 ing generally acknowledged that the ethnic re- 
 ligions are losing hold on the people, but it is 
 pertinent to ask. Is a divided Christianity pre- 
 pared to win them to Christ? My answer is in 
 the last report of the religious census of the stu- 
 
26 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 dent body of the Imperial University of Japan* 
 Of the nearly 5,000 students, 6 are Confucianists, 
 12 Shintoists, 60 Christians, 300 Buddhists, 1,500 
 Atheists, and 3,000 Agnostics ! ‘ The present day 
 crises, whether dealing with the local Church or 
 world education or the ethnic religions or an un- 
 believing world, is a challenge for the unity of 
 Christendom. 
 
 * III. The vindication of Christianity is de- 
 
 * pendent upon a united Church. The advance of 
 . Christianity through the world has been marked 
 . by a succession of crises in its encounter with va- 
 . rious forms of unbelief. Out of these struggles 
 
 * Christianity has been vindicated. Unity is neces- 
 . sary for its vindication in the present crises. 
 
 Christianity arose amid conflicts and struggles. 
 Its first encounter was with Judaism. It found 
 its vindication in the life, death and resurrection 
 of Jesus, and the four Gospels are the product of 
 that conflict. As it pushed its way into the 
 Roman Empire paganism yielded its decaying 
 faith to the bold missionary programme of the 
 early Church, leaving the Acts and the Epistles 
 of the New Testament, along with the apologies 
 of Justin, Athenagoras and others as the evidence 
 of its right to be heard. Then it encountered 
 pagan philosophy. Lucian treated its advance 
 with a compassionate smile of unbelief, Celsus 
 with critical ability denied the supernatural will, 
 and Porphyry, perhaps the bitterest opponent 
 Christianity ever had, combined a brilliancy and 
 ‘“Unity and Missions,” by Arthur Judson Brown. 
 
CHBISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 27 
 
 sagacity that made him a critic of extraordinary 
 ability. Others had attempted to check the ad- 
 vance of Christianity; he sought to abolish it. 
 But equally great minds arose in the persons of 
 Tertullian, Clement, Origen, Eusebius and Au- 
 gustine, leaving us their apologetic writings with 
 the witness of the martyrs. Then came the con- 
 flict with barbarism, which swept with destruc- 
 tion over the decaying Roman Empire, but the 
 Christian schools of the Middle Ages with their 
 great missionary programmes furnished the evi- 
 dences of Christianity’s vindication. So with its 
 conflict with Islam. A most treacherous foe was 
 modern rationalism, speaking sometimes in terms 
 of the Italian naturalists, or in terms of the Eng- 
 lish deists, or in terms of the French atheists, or 
 in terms of the German pantheists, but great souls 
 like Bentley, Berkeley, Butler and Neander spoke 
 for the truth until under wider skies Christian- 
 ity’s vindication was again evidenced. But ncJ >• 
 severer conflict has ever been encountered than* 
 that of these times. Whether it is more severe or • 
 less severe is immaterial, only according to the 
 logic of conflicts this would be the most severe. 
 Be that as it may, Christianity’s vindication in 
 these times lies by the way of a united Church. 
 
 That we may focus our vision aright and see 
 through the storm of conflict we must go back to 
 the days when Jesus was in the flesh and look 
 with Him through the dissolving mist of years. 
 
 I cite a few quotations from Him. Jesus saw the 
 place of His own person in the foundation of His 
 
28 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT ? 
 
 Church. In conversation with His disciples He 
 says, 
 
 “Upon this rock I will build My Church; and the 
 gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” ‘ 
 
 The Church cannot perish out of the earth any 
 
 • more than God can perish out of the universe. 
 
 • But that is no reason for maintaining divisions in 
 
 • the Church, bringing it to the brink of ruin. A 
 house divided against itself cannot stand, al- 
 though in their separate capacities the members 
 of the household may go on living separately 
 without speaking to each other, conducting their 
 social and business affairs with some kind of 
 satisfaction to themselves and outwardly appear- 
 ing to be getting along well. Jesus taught that 
 such a house has fallen, that such a course is 
 wrong, and He applied the principle to the 
 Church. The Church is divided against itself 
 and is therefore a fallen institution; and more, 
 what nation to-day hesitates to smite with war a 
 sister nation because of the presence there of the 
 Church? The various divisions — Greek Ortho- 
 dox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and the multi- 
 plicity of Protestants — are proudly conducting 
 their affairs as though each were the whole 
 Church. However satisfactory the annual re- 
 ports may be it is a policy that is doomed to fail- 
 ure. Not even the Church of Christ can survive 
 such a departure unless there come a spiritual 
 awakening whereby the broken threads of Chris- 
 
 ’ Matt. i6 : i8. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 29 
 
 tian brotherhood shall be bound into a permanent 
 unity in Christ. 
 
 The Church has its faults, to be sure, and we 
 should not dodge in denying them. Its members 
 through all the ages have been of like passions 
 with ourselves. Some — and this number has 
 been far too large — have loved preeminence, 
 thereby being more properly classed as the dis- 
 ciples of the self-seeking Diotrephes than of the 
 self-sacrificing Jesus, but I dare say that there 
 has not been a communion in Christendom where 
 there could not be found examples of genuine 
 piety and true devotion. 
 
 Every century from the first to the twentieth 
 is rich in its testimony like that given by Paul, 
 Peter, John, Clement and Polycarp of the first 
 century, Irenseus and the liturgy of the Greek 
 Church of the second and third, Augustine, 
 Chrysostom, Ambrose and Basil of the fourth, 
 Gelasius of the fifth, Gregory of the sixth, Bede 
 of the seventh, Alcuin of the eighth, Alfred of 
 the ninth, ^thelwold of the tenth, Anselm of the 
 eleventh, Dan Jeremy of the twelfth, Thomas 
 Aquinas and John Tauler of the thirteenth, 
 Thomas a Kempis of the fourteenth, Savonarola, 
 Erasmus, Luther and Melanchthon of the fif- 
 teenth, Bishop Andrewes, John Knox, Francis 
 Bacon and Lady Jane Grey of the sixteenth, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Matthew Henry, Fenelon, Sir 
 Matthew Hale, Bishop Wilson and Leighton of 
 the seventeenth, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, 
 Henry Martyn, Edward Bickersteth, Chalmers, 
 
30 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT! 
 
 Channing and Heber of the eighteenth and Henry 
 Alford, George Dawson, Boyd Carpenter, Cardi- 
 nal Newman, Pusey, Maurice, Robert Collyer, 
 James Martineau, Canon Liddon, Christina G, 
 Rossetti, and crowds of others of the nineteenth 
 and twentieth centuries. I have found in read- 
 ing the prayers of these that I have been better 
 able to bring my petitions before God than in my 
 own feeble language. There was Francis of 
 Assisi in mendicant robes with crucifix and 
 rosary, and years later came John Woolman with 
 no outward signs or ordinances, but both of these 
 were followers of Christ and ten thousand others, 
 showing us how full God’s hand is of sanctified 
 jewels. Evil can mar the Church, but evil can- 
 not absolutely prevail over it. 
 
 Discord was a part of the picture that Jesus 
 left us. That memorable conversation on the 
 Mount of Olives furnishes the second quotation 
 from Him. He says, 
 
 “ Then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one 
 another, and shall hate one another.” ^ 
 
 If the tense of this sentence were changed from 
 the future to the past, so as to make it read 
 “ Then did many stumble, and did deliver up one 
 another, and did hate one another,” it would be 
 an authentic sentence for any volume of Church 
 history. Jesus not only knew God, but He knew 
 man. He saw the fermentations in the material 
 out of which He would make His Church. It 
 was the imperfect man that He was dealing with 
 * Matt. 24 : 10. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY ; ITS NECESSITY 31 
 
 and He knew that, but the goal of the imperfect 
 was growth into perfection — “ a glorious Church, 
 not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; but 
 that it would be holy and without blemish.” ‘ 
 We must face the fact that the Church has 
 stumbled through the centuries and is still stum- 
 bling, that brother has delivered up brother to 
 torture and death and that brother has hated 
 brother, but the time is at hand when the Church 
 needs to stumble less, to teach brothers to defend 
 brothers and to exemplify love to all irrespective 
 of denomination, nationality, race or class. Once , 
 it was said, “ See how those Christians love each . 
 other!” Years after it was just as appropriate v 
 to say, “ See how those Christians hate each , 
 other I ” While conditions have greatly im- • 
 proved, there could not be found a person to-day « 
 so false as to say, “ See how the Roman Catholics • 
 and Protestants love each other ! ” Although the * 
 cleavages between the various Protestant com- 
 munions are not nearly so wide as in former 
 years, and we rejoice in this, I think any one 
 would doubt, however, that the time has come 
 when love is the characteristic procedure between 
 all the Protestant divisions. Then we have some 
 distance to go yet in the unity of the Protestant 
 household alone, for love is the badge of Chris- 
 tian discipleship. Any other road leads us away 
 from the goal. Only on that road can we walk 
 so long as we are seeking for the unity of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 ^ Eph. s : 37 . 
 
32 IFKOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 In His high-priestly prayer Jesus prayed for 
 the unity of His Church in words trembling with 
 tears, which furnish the third quotation from 
 Him, He says, 
 
 “ Holy Father ... I pray . . . that they may 
 all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in 
 Thee, that they also may be in Us : that the world may 
 believe that Thou didst send Me.” * 
 
 This prayer still hovers over the Church like the 
 pillar of cloud over the tabernacle. It is both 
 an appeal and a method — an appeal to God with 
 ourselves as witnesses and the method of prayer 
 as the channel of our approach to each other. 
 
 • The winning of this world to Christ is a big task 
 •for a united Church — the biggest task ever under- 
 
 • taken by mortal man. It cannot be done by a 
 
 • divided Church. There is no more idle tale than 
 to talk of the divided Church’s winning this 
 world. Victory can come only through unity of 
 forces. After nearly two thousand years where 
 is the nation the majority of whose citizens are 
 definitely in fellowship with the Church or 
 Churches of that nation? 
 
 . The world to-day is confused, badly confused. 
 •Its confusion is largely due to the confused 
 . Church, whose leadership is lost in the multiplic- 
 , ity of divisions. When God called for a prophet 
 centuries ago the prompt response was “ Here 
 am I,” but in these days of confusion the stam- 
 mering response comes, “ Where are we ? ” 
 Where indeed are we and what can we do? 
 
 ’John 17:21. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 33 
 
 There can be no more serious issue than that 
 which we face to-day. The greatest need of the 
 hour is the vindication of Christianity. For more 
 than a thousand years the Church historians are 
 one in their opinion that the lethargy of the 
 Church in the sixth century afforded an oppor- 
 tunity for the rise of Mohammedanism and its 
 establishment on three continents. In the years 
 to come the charge will be laid against the Church 
 of this day that because of its divisions, and 
 therefore its unspiritual attitudes, the whole 
 world is under the domination of socijJ and eco- 
 nomic wrongs, culminating in the disastrous war 
 of 1914, which was one of the most brutal wars 
 of all history, and which broke forth among the 
 most Christian nations, demonstrating the power 
 of Satan and the present weakness of the Church. 
 At the crises of 1914 organized Christianity stood 
 helpless in every nation on the globe and was 
 powerless to preserve the peace of the world. 
 Surely division has its fruit. Whatever may be 
 the immediate causes, the remote cause must be 
 laid at the door of the Church. Sins of omission 
 are as far-reaching in their consequences as sins 
 of commission. No division of Christendom can 
 escape this responsibility. We are all involved, 
 and so seriously involved that these times chal- 
 lenge the Church, not only for a restatement of 
 faith, but both for the readjustment of our 
 methods and for the manifestation of a new 
 spirit, if we would be a factor at all in contribut- 
 ing to the reconstruction of the world. 
 
34 IF NOT A UIHTED CHTJECH— WHATf 
 
 In His prayer Jesus has shown that the secret 
 of the world conquest lies in a united Church — 
 not merely a cooperation of denominations nor a 
 federation of denominations, however good these 
 may be, and they are good as far as they go, but 
 Jesus directed us to go beyond these into a union 
 of believers closer than that between brothers of 
 the same parents — a union like that between 
 Himself and the Father, There are possibilities 
 in Christian life far, very far beyond the achieve- 
 ments of these times. Christ came to save a 
 world and the world is not saved. Its tragedies 
 succeed each other as though the Church bore no 
 witness against their iniquities. 
 
 Jesus looks calmly beyond the turmoil of strife 
 and schism. In the fourth quotation He says, 
 
 “ Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them 
 also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and 
 they shall become one flock, one shepherd.”* 
 
 As the Good Shepherd was the beautiful symbol 
 in the early Church, the religion of the Good 
 Shepherd must be the religion of conquest in the 
 latter days. The most ancient Christian gems, 
 perhaps the very first gems of the early Church, 
 set forth the conception of the spirit of Christi- 
 anity in this favourite figure. Says Canon Far- 
 rar, “ They looked on that figure, and it conveyed 
 to them all they wanted.”’ Theologians and 
 Church councils must fade as the Good Shepherd 
 
 *John io:i6. 
 
 ’ “ The Life of Christ as Represented in Art,” by 
 Frederic W. Farrar. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 36 
 
 comes again into view. Hear Him say, “ I that 
 speak unto thee am He,” The Good Shepherd is 
 not here “ to repel, but to include ; not to con- 
 demn, but to save.” His Church must rise to 
 His Spirit and include in her fellowship all who 
 accept Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of 
 God and our Lord and Saviour. These limita- 
 tions are sublimely divine. All others savour of 
 sectarianism. 
 
 Of the necessities that face us it may be said 
 with confidence that it is not necessary that there 
 should be Episcopal schools. Disciple schools, 
 Presbyterian schools, Methodist schools. Baptist 
 schools. Congregational schools, Lutheran schools, 
 Roman Catholic schools. Church of God in Christ 
 Jesus schools nor Old Two-seed- in- the-Spirit 
 Predestination Baptist schools. No, it is not 
 necessary for Christianity that there should be 
 any of these schools, any more than that there 
 should be Episcopal journals. Disciple journals, 
 Presbyterian journals, Methodist journals, Bap- 
 tist journals. Congregational journals, Lutheran 
 journals, Roman Catholic journals. Church of God 
 in Christ Jesus journals nor Old Two-seed-in- 
 the-Spirit Predestination Baptist journals. These 
 are not the necessities of Christianity, but both 
 these schools and these journals are necessary for 
 the perpetuation of division in the Church of 
 Christ. They are the stilts upon which a divided 
 Church walks and in spite of these the Church 
 has survived. The great necessity of these times, 
 however, is that we should have both schools and 
 
36 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 journals distinctively Christian, including the 
 thought and experience of the whole Church for 
 the winning of the whole world to Jesus Christ. 
 It is not that these schools and journals should be 
 abolished except where they may be crowded in 
 some centers, but all should be interdenomina- 
 tionalized by bringing persons of other com- 
 munions on the board of trustees, in the faculty 
 and among the editorial force. 
 
 The times are serious. Upon our consciences 
 must be written with a pen of iron that Christian 
 unity is necessary because without it there can be 
 neither a spiritual Church nor a world-victorious 
 Church ; or to phrase it in other words, in order 
 that the Church be spiritual and world-victorious 
 it is necessary that it 
 
 “ attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 
 of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”^ 
 
 The necessities that lie before us are not in 
 forms, ceremonies and declarations. You may 
 have these abundantly or meagerly and be with 
 or without genuine religion. Neither because a 
 thing is ancient nor because it is modern is it to 
 be a criterion of truth. The test must be found 
 in awakening that true nobility of soul that sets a 
 man in the proper attitude to God and to his 
 fellows. Hence the necessary steps toward the 
 unity of the Church of Christ may find satisfac- 
 tory expression in the following propositions : 
 
 I. A Christian must be free for the real de- 
 * Eph. 4 : 13. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 37 
 
 velopment of his spiritual nature, free from the 
 bondage of sin and free to live the life of the 
 Spirit, drawing upon the ideals and experiences of 
 . both the past and the present without the dictates 
 • of external authority. 
 
 . 2. A Christian must have his own experience 
 
 with God, the outcome of his own faith, issuing 
 in a life of penitence, humility and service. 
 
 , 3. A Christian must have fellowship with all 
 
 . souls that have fellowship with God and anything 
 that hinders that fellowship is essentially evil and 
 its abolition is as imperative as the removal of 
 anything that hinders the fellowship of the soul 
 with God. 
 
 4. A Christian’s life, as indeed the Church’s 
 ' life, must interpret love as revealed in the life and 
 death of Jesus, accepting it so fully as to be will- 
 ing to take the risk it involves in the midst of a 
 society that has not yet accepted it. 
 
 These propositions are reasonable and they in- 
 dicate clearly that we must go beyond where we 
 are if we are to find even the atmosphere that 
 shall make possible the unity of the Church. 
 Conferences are helpful, but conferences alone 
 cannot unite the divided Church; working to- 
 gether is helpful, but simply working together 
 will not solve the problem; there must be divine 
 power. The Church is the offspring of God and 
 the first fruits of mankind. It can only survive 
 by fulfilling its mission which is to manifest God 
 to men and to unify mankind into brotherhood. 
 Neither the manifesting of God nor the unifying 
 
38 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 of men can be done apart from the power that 
 comes from above. Present day organized Chris- 
 tianity lacks that power. Tragic as it may be to 
 acknowledge it, nevertheless it is true that while 
 we are increasing in Church efficiency and Church 
 activities, we are not producing an increase in 
 Christian power. We have grown tremendously 
 rich in material things and profoundly learned in 
 the sciences and philosophies of the world, and I 
 know not but that Christ is saying to us, as He 
 said to the Church in Laodicea, 
 
 “ Because thou sayest, I am rich and have gotten riches, 
 and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou 
 art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind 
 and naked : I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by 
 fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, 
 that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of 
 thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve to 
 anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. As many as 
 I love, I reprove and chasten : be zealous therefore, and 
 repent.” ‘ 
 
 These words come with strange appropriateness. 
 Christ speaks to us in the accents of a love like 
 that which He spoke to a divided Judaism in His 
 lamentation over Jerusalem. Long ago He came 
 unto His own and they did not receive Him. He 
 is appealing to us to-day by the condition of His 
 Church, by the condition of the world, by His 
 death and resurrection and by His Spirit’s hunger 
 In us for spiritual growth, no one of which is sat- 
 isfied with anything less than a united Church. 
 Shall we heed the appeal ? For myself, and every 
 * Rev. 3 : 17-19. 
 
OHRISTIAK UNITY : ITS NECESSITY 39 
 
 man must answer for himself before God, I feel 
 ill at ease with a sectarian, the man who is ever 
 contending for a side, believing that it is not pos- 
 sible for him to be mistaken about the things on 
 which we differ and maintaining denominational 
 superiority and aloofness. It is immaterial 
 whether he be a Disciple or an Episcopalian or a 
 Baptist or a Roman Catholic or a Presbyterian or 
 a Lutheran or a Methodist or an Old Two-Seed- 
 in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist, I am ill at 
 ease with him because I am conscious that the 
 thing for which he stands I hate. There are 
 multitudes who are preeminently Christian first 
 and are denominationally affiliated from neces- 
 sity. They have an atmosphere about them like 
 the golden days of June and every lover of God 
 feels at home in their company, but sectarianism 
 is an intruder — uncouth, unbrotherly and the 
 damnable heresy of Christendom. I hate it and 
 absolutely refuse to wear its trammels irrespective 
 of consequences. 
 
 After Cato was sent to arbitrate the differences 
 between the Carthaginians and King Masinissa, 
 he ever afterwards closed every speech in the 
 Roman senate with the well-known words : “ For 
 the rest, I vote that Carthage must be destroyed.”^ 
 
 I close this lecture with these words: Sectarian-# 
 ism must be abolished. Henceforth let no man * 
 glory in his denomination; that is sectarianism: • 
 but let all men glory in Christ and practice broth- » 
 erhood with men ; that is Christianity. • 
 
 * " Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.” 
 
II 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY: ITS GROWTH 
 
 ^ ■ 'AHE growth of the Church into unity is 
 I as true to its origin as tulip blossoms 
 
 JL are to tulip bulbs. However schis- 
 
 matic the soil the seed will send its roots into all 
 temperaments, classes and nationalities until the 
 best in them will furnish nutrition for the seeds’ 
 growth into stalk and blossom. Stormy at- 
 mospheres have swept and will continue to sweep 
 around its tender growth, toughening its fibre for 
 a blossom of the rarest beauty. If there were 
 not a single sentence in the Scriptures relative to 
 the unity of the Church the fact that the Church 
 came from God would still make unity its ulti- 
 mate and normal condition biologically. Living 
 , things grow. The growth of the Church into 
 
 • unity must be in conformity to the eternal laws 
 
 * of life. 
 
 But to the Scriptures, which lie before us like 
 a landscape, with fertile plains and beautiful gar- 
 dens, with wooded lands and swampy meadows, 
 with rolling hills and mountain tops. That far- 
 visioned statement — “ Till we all attain unto the 
 unity of the faith ” — is one of the Himalayan 
 peaks — so far in the distance and so high that we 
 can scarcely see the line that divides the moun- 
 40 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 41 
 
 tain top from the sky. Between us and it lies 
 the untrodden country. But the Atlantic Ocean 
 was once without a path across its three thousand 
 miles of waves; likewise the skies were once 
 without paths to their fascinating heights; and 
 everything to which men have attained has been 
 seen first in the distance, then by constant ad- 
 vance the goal has been reached. We recognize 
 the advancement and worth of the sciences. 
 Their contributions have been brilliant and ines- 
 timable, but the greatest contribution to these 
 times is the universal awakening of a desire for 
 growth “ unto the unity of the faith.” Waiving 
 every other problem, the growth of the divided 
 Church of Christ into unity must hold priority. 
 
 * I. The Scripture records are abundant in sus- 
 
 • taining the concept of unity in the early 
 
 . Church. Jesus emphasized the principle of unity 
 
 and prayed for the unity of His disciples. The 
 first move of the Church in its evangelistic work 
 was breaking down the walls of two thousand 
 years’ standing between Jews and Gentiles, 
 thereby marking the birth of a new internation- 
 alism. Jesus is the Saviour of all nations. The 
 Bishop of Oxford truly says, “ Jesus both re- 
 jected and refused to associate Himself with the 
 current patriotism of His nation and positively 
 laid the basis of universalism in His dealings with 
 mankind.” ' If these national walls were to be 
 leveled by the love of God manifested among 
 men, how much more every other barrier is to 
 * The Cambridge Magazine, May 25, 1918, 
 
42 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT t 
 
 be leveled! Nothing so strongly proves the fal- 
 sity of divided Christianity as its ability to create 
 barriers, when its original purpose was to abolish 
 all barriers. Christianity is preeminently a so- 
 cial religion and a world brotherhood was the 
 dream of its Founder, who so beautifully passes 
 from His heart to ours the badge of discipleship, 
 when He says, 
 
 “ By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, 
 if ye have love one to another.” * 
 
 , In every instance the apostolic writers sustain 
 • the concept of unity. On the appearance of divi- 
 sion in the Church at Corinth, Paul says, 
 
 “ For it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my 
 brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, 
 that there are contentions among you. Now this I 
 mean, that each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I 
 of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is 
 Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were 
 ye baptized into the name of Paul? . . . And I, 
 brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, 
 but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I fed you 
 with milk, not with meat; for ye were not yet able to 
 bear it: nay, not even now are ye able; for ye are yet 
 carnal: for whereas there is among you jealousy and 
 strife, are ye not carnal, and do ye not walk after the 
 manner of men? For when one saith, I am of Paul; 
 and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not men? WTiat 
 then is Apollos? and what is Paul? Ministers through 
 whom ye believed; and each as the Lord gave to him. 
 I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 
 So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he 
 that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now 
 'John 13:35- 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 43 
 
 he that plantcth and he that watereth are one: but 
 each shall receive his own reward according to his own 
 labour. For we are God’s fellow-workers : ye are God’s 
 husbandry, God’s building.”* 
 
 What burning words! The low spirituality of 
 the Corinthian Church is attributed to their divi- 
 sive and party spirit with a general condemnation 
 of their whole policy. It is one of the severest 
 of all Scriptural indictments and applies with re- 
 markable appropriateness to present day condi- 
 tions. There is no one of us but feels that the 
 tides of spirituality are low — the tides in my 
 heart and yours. A fundamental part of spiritual 
 life is communion with the spirits of the whole 
 Church. Denominationalism — including Greek 
 
 Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protes- 
 tant — narrows this communion largely to those of 
 one denomination, thereby dwarfing the whole 
 spiritual life of the Church. It is a common thing 
 to look to all other causes other than the real one. 
 In Paul’s diagnosis of the Corinthian Church he 
 locates the cause of the disease at once, although 
 by so doing he involves his own name in a scandal 
 for all ages. If his words had been written in 
 this year of our Lord they could not have been 
 more applicable to us now. Substitute for the 
 names of Paul, Apollos, Cephas and Christ such 
 names as designate our Christian parties to-day, 
 including my own party, which has taken the 
 name of Christ, and it is as clear a violation of 
 the apostolic admonition as stealing is a violation 
 * I Cor. i: II-I3; 3 : i-9- 
 
44 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 of the eighth commandment. I am not accusing 
 our forebears. I have no word of condemnation 
 for the dead, be they saints or sinners. I am 
 talking about ourselves. I am accusing my own 
 heart and yours. I am not at ease in this condi- 
 tion. I know that the thing is wrong. I am a 
 partner to the wrong as is every other Christian — 
 Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and 
 Protestant — and therefore it must become a mat- 
 ter of personal concern to me and to all other 
 Christians. Every Christian who denies any 
 such partnership and therefore any concern about 
 the matter makes more bold his sectarianism. 
 The time is now for us to seek with earnestness 
 for a new heart in our attitude and disposition 
 toward the will of God regarding the unity of the 
 Church, abolishing party names and lifting the 
 name of Christ above its divisive capacity to its 
 rightful place of universal dominion. 
 
 Paul’s condemnation rested upon the whole 
 Corinthian Church — those who took the names of 
 men and those who took a divided Christ. Greek 
 Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and all 
 Protestant bodies are under indictment and an 
 indictment that indicates we are, after nearly 
 nineteen hundred years, not only involved in, but 
 maintaining with considerable satisfaction the es- 
 tablishment of the policy of the Corinthian 
 Church — a policy which the Apostle so severely 
 condemned as to classify the Corinthian Church 
 as carnal and not spiritual. If the Corinthian 
 Church was carnal in consequence of division in 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 45 
 
 its incipiency, how much more must it be so in the 
 Church at large with its multiplicity of divisions, 
 some of them centuries old! We must face the 
 fact that we are now in the period of babyhood 
 in our religious experiences. Trammeled by the 
 Corinthian policy we are working against diffi- 
 culties which can never be remedied except by 
 abolishing the Corinthian policy for that policy 
 which will aid the Church in its normal growth 
 into unity. 
 
 The concept of imity was vital in the faith of 
 the Apostle Paul. Sentence after sentence deal- 
 ing directly or indirectly with this theme may be 
 found in every epistle which he wrote — some- 
 times whole paragraphs, such as in his epistle to 
 the Church at Ephesus, when he says, 
 
 “ I therefore, the prisoner In the Lord, beseech you to 
 walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, 
 with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, 
 forbearing one another in love ; giving diligence to 
 keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 
 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were 
 called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, 
 one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is over 
 all, and through all, and in all. . . . And He gave 
 some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, 
 evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the 
 perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, 
 unto the building up of the Body of Christ; till we all 
 attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 
 of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that 
 we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and 
 carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the 
 
46 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT f 
 
 sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; 
 but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things 
 into Him, Who is the Head, even Christ; from Whom 
 all the Body fitly framed and knit together through 
 that which every joint supplieth, according to the work- 
 ing in due measure of each several part, maketh the 
 increase of the Body unto the building up of itself in 
 love.”* 
 
 Wonderful picture! Modest as Nature; yet 
 surpassing in sublimity anything in Nature ! We 
 talk about the wonders and the charm of the 
 physical world such as the Niagara Falls or 
 Mont Blanc or the Grand Canyon of Arizona or 
 the rolling ocean or the star-lit sky or the richly 
 coloured sunset. These are but nursery toys by 
 the side of what the Apostle has flung before our 
 vision. We are haunted by this lofty ideal be- 
 cause of the possibilities that are within us for its 
 attainment. There is an undeveloped greatness 
 in every Christian far beyond where he now is. 
 To get out of the narrow spiritual vision of these 
 times we must admire the great things — the great- 
 ness of the Church of Christ, which extends far 
 beyond the boundaries of any communion in 
 Christendom. Knowledge, experience and re- 
 flection open up the far vistas of spiritual possi- 
 bility. Let us leave petty things to the grave- 
 yard, else their consideration may make a tomb 
 of our great spiritual ideals. 
 
 The deep experiences of the soul give atmos- 
 phere to the growth of the Church. The 
 Apostle names the elements of the atmosphere 
 * Eph. 4:1-6; 11-16. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 47 
 
 for this development in such terms as " lowli- 
 ness,” “ meekness,” “ longsuffering,” “ forbear- 
 ing,” “ love,” and ” diligence.” These elements, 
 which are already rising in the souls of many in 
 the various communions, have in themselves the 
 hope of a united Christendom. They are as 
 modest as the sun and penetrating as the summer 
 air, enabling soul to act upon soul like the April 
 atmosphere upon tulip bulbs and violet roots. 
 
 . II. History is replete with appeals and move- 
 , ments for the unity of the Church. The voices 
 • of Origen, Tertullian, Augustine and others in 
 t the period following the Apostles sounded the 
 , same note as that in the apostolic writings. The 
 changes in matters of Church government in the 
 early centuries, especially the rise of the episco- 
 pate, had their origin in efforts to maintain unity. 
 These changes, however, developed an ecclesias- 
 ticism which hastened the great division of 1054, 
 separating the Eastern and Western Churches. 
 But still there were yearnings for fellowship with 
 the whole Church from earnest hearts like Ber- 
 nard, who says, 
 
 “ Who can grant me, before I die, to see the Church of 
 God, such as she has been in the primitive times ? " 
 
 The Protestant Reformation was another se- 
 ' vere wrench, leaving the Roman Catholic Church 
 % one, but paving the way to such a multiplicity of 
 . divisions among Protestants that the Roman 
 Catholic orator Bossuet exclaims, 
 
 "Great God! Is it possible that upon the same matters 
 
48 IPNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 and same questions, so many multiplied acts, so many 
 divisions and different confessions of faith are neces- 
 sary? . , . These variations fill us with astonish- 
 ment.” ^ 
 
 Melanchthon was the one irenic character of 
 the Protestant Reformation, but he was over- 
 shadowed by the storm of bitter controversy. 
 Nevertheless Calvin, writing to Cranmer in 1553, 
 says, 
 
 “ I should not hesitate to cross ten seas if by this 
 means holy communion might prevail among the mem- 
 bers of Christ.” 
 
 George Calixtus was the earliest of modem 
 apostles of reconciliation in the divided Church. 
 He proposed as a basis the New Testament as 
 interpreted by the Apostles’ Creed. Through his 
 efforts the conference of Thorn was held, lasting 
 for months and being participated in by thirty- 
 seven Lutherans, twenty-seven Roman Catholics 
 and fifteen members of the Reformed Church. 
 From its session Calixtus was excluded by his 
 Lutheran brethren and identified with the num- 
 ber of the beast in the Apocalypse. In one of his 
 letters written in gentleness and love to the 
 Roman Catholic universities of Germany he says, 
 
 “Iff may but help toward the healing of our schisms, 
 I would shrink from no cares and night watchings, no 
 efforts and no dangers . . . nay, I will never spare 
 
 * “ History of the Variations of the Protestant 
 Churches,” Vol. I. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 49 
 
 either my life nor my blood, if so be I may purchase 
 the peace of the Church.” * 
 
 All Europe wearied under theological dissen- 
 sion. Hugo Grotius lent his great intellect to the 
 cause of peace as a statesman rather than a theo- 
 logian and sought an adjustment of Protestant 
 differences with a reformed Roman Catholicism. 
 Leibnitz and Bossuet conducted a lengthy corre- 
 spondence in the same interest. Leibnitz like- 
 wise sought reconciliation between the Lutheran 
 and Reformed Churches. A group in the theo- 
 logical seminary at Frankfort-on- the-Oder met 
 constantly in search for some basis of unity. 
 Out of those conferences came that fine state- 
 ment of Rupertus Meldenius, modified frequently 
 but originally given as follows : 
 
 “ Unity in things necessary, liberty in things unneces- 
 sary, and charity in both, would do all our work.”* 
 
 John Dury, who devoted his life to the cause 
 of union, traveled extensively throughout Eu- 
 rope, advocating the abolition of party names and 
 bitter controversies and the establishment of na- 
 tional Churches. It received favourable consid- 
 
 * Dowding’s “ Life and Correspondence of George 
 Calixtus.” 
 
 * Richard Baxter in his “ True and Only Way of 
 Concord of All Christians ” gives the translation from 
 the Latin, which is: "Si in necessariis sit unitas, in 
 non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas, optimo certe 
 loco essent res nostrae.” According to Bishop John F. 
 Hurst in a lecture delivered at the Union Theological 
 Seminary in 1896 and published in “ Church Unity,” the 
 first mention of this sentence occurs in an anonymous 
 book entitled “ Paraenesis Votiva,” in which it is at- 
 tributed to Rupertus Meldenius. 
 
I 
 
 60 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 eration from many Church leaders, but the death 
 of his chief patron, Gustavus Adolphus, cut short 
 any further development. Dupin proposed as a 
 basis of union between the Church of Rome and 
 the Church of England compromises on auricular 
 confession, pope’s supremacy, religious vows. 
 Lenten fasts and abstinence and celibacy of the 
 clergy. At the same time he entered into nego- 
 tiations through Peter the Great for the Greek 
 Church to come into the union, but Pope Clem- 
 ent XI severely censured him and Louis XIV 
 dismissed him from among the doctors of the 
 Sorbonne. 
 
 Richard Baxter preached constantly on the 
 necessity of a united Church and wrote numerous 
 pamphlets in its behalf. In his “ True and Only 
 Way of Concord of All Christians,” he says, 
 
 “ Unity and concord is the Church’s beauty. It makes 
 us amiable even to the eyes of nature and venerable 
 and terrible even to the eyes of malice. . . . The 
 concord of believers does greatly conduce to the success 
 of the ministry and the propagation of the Gospel and 
 the conviction and salvation of ungodly souls. . . . 
 When Christ prayed for the unity of His disciples, He 
 redoubled His argument from the effect or end (that 
 the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me and hath 
 loved them). Would this make the world believe that 
 Christ was sent of God? Yes, undoubtedly. If all 
 Christians were reduced to a holy concord it would do 
 more to win the heathen world than all other means 
 can do without it.” 
 
 Page after page rings with the call for the 
 unity of the Church. He continues. 
 
CHKISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 61 
 
 " Why, sirs, have not Independents, Presbyterians, 
 Episcopalians, etc., one God, one Christ, one Spirit, one 
 Creed, one Scripture, one hope of everlasting life? Are 
 our disagreements so great that we may not live together 
 in love, and close in fraternal union and unity? Are 
 we not of one religion? Do we differ in fundamentals 
 or substantials ? Will not conscience worry us? Will 
 not posterity curse us if by our divisions we betray the 
 Gospel into the hands of the enemies? And if by our 
 mutual envyings and jealousies and perverse zeal for 
 our several conceits, we should keep open the breach for 
 all heresies and wickedness to enter, we will make a 
 prey for our own poor people’s souls. . . . Let us 
 straiten the bond of Christian unity and love, and help 
 each other against the powers of hell, and join our 
 forces against one common enemy.” 
 
 Edward Stillingfleet, afterwards Bishop of 
 Worcester, boldly declared the form of Church 
 government a non-essential. He wrote a stirring 
 volume under the title “ Irenicum,” in which he 
 sought for common ground of reconciliation be- 
 tween episcopacy and Presbyterianism. He says, 
 
 “For the Church to require more than Christ Himself 
 did, or make the condition of her communion more than 
 our Saviour did of discipleship, is wholly unwarranted.” 
 
 John Owen was a tower of strength among the 
 Puritans of his day. He says, 
 
 “ Wherever there is a man or a body of men, who are 
 united to Him by a living faith and are keeping His 
 commandments, he or they are in communion with the 
 Church of God. ... But I verily believe that when 
 God shall accomplish it, it will be the effect of love, and 
 not the cause of love.” 
 
62 IF NOT A UNITED CHURCH— WHAT ! 
 
 William Chillingworth pleaded for a return to 
 the Scriptures as the only path for the unity of 
 God’s people. Dying in prison in consequence of 
 his faith, he says, 
 
 “ Take away this persecuting, burning, cursing, damn- 
 ing of men for not subscribing to the words of men, as 
 the words of God; require of Christians only to believe 
 in Christ and to call no man master but Him only.” 
 
 John Wesley makes the appeal for unity in the 
 very preface of his “ Notes Upon the New Testa- 
 ment.” He says, 
 
 “ Would to God that all the party names, and un- 
 scriptural phrases and forms, which have divided the 
 Christian world, were forgot, and that we might all 
 agree to sit down together, as humble, loving disciples, 
 at the feet of our common Master, to hear His word, to 
 imbibe His Spirit, and to transcribe His life in our 
 own!” 
 
 Robert Hall pleaded for the union of all Qiris- 
 tians in his practice of broad and generous prin- 
 ciples. He says, 
 
 “ Nothing more abhorrent to the principles and max- 
 ims of the sacred oracles can be conceived than the idea 
 of a plurality of true Churches, neither in actual com- 
 munion with each other, nor in the capacity for such 
 communion. Though this rending of the seamless 
 coat of our Saviour, this schism in the members of His 
 mystical Body, is by far the greatest calamity which has 
 befallen the Christian interest, and one of the most fatal 
 effects of the great apostasy foretold by the sacred 
 penman, we have been so long familiarized to it, as to 
 be scarcely sensible of its enormity; nor does it excite 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 63 
 
 suspicion or concern in any degree proportioned to what 
 would be felt by one who had contemplated the Church 
 in the first ages. Christian societies regarding each 
 other with the jealousies of rival empires, each trying 
 to raise itself on the ruin of all the others, making 
 extravagant boasts of superior purity, generally in exact 
 proportion to their departures from it, and scarcely 
 deigning to acknowledge the possibility of obtaining 
 salvation out of their pale, is the odious and disgusting 
 spectacle which modern Christendom presents. The 
 evils which result from this state of division are in- 
 calculable. It supplies infidels with their most plausible 
 topics of invective; it hardens the conscience of the 
 irreligious; it weakens the hands of the good, impedes 
 the efficiency of prayer, and is probably the principal 
 obstruction to that ample effusion of the Spirit which is 
 essential to the renovation of the world.” * 
 
 Alexander Campbell spent his life in the ad- 
 vocacy of Christian unity. Of him Bishop John 
 F. Hurst, in his “ Short History of the Christian 
 Church,” affirms “ Fetv men have impressed 
 themselves more profoundly on the religious life 
 of their age than he.” Campbell says in his 
 “ Christian System,” 
 
 “No mortal need fancy that he shall have the honour 
 of devising either the plan of uniting Christians into one 
 holy band of zealous cooperation, or of converting Jews 
 and Gentiles to the faith that Jesus is that seed in Whom 
 all the families of the earth are yet to be blessed. The 
 plan is divine. It is ordained by God ; and, better still, 
 it is already revealed. Is any one impatient to hear it? 
 Let him again read the intercessions of the Lord Mes- 
 
 * " The Works of Robert Hall,” with Memoir by 
 Gregory. 
 
64 IF NOT A UNITED CHURCH— WHAT ? 
 
 siah in the seventeenth chapter of John. L,et him then 
 examine the two following propositions, and say whether 
 these do not express heaven’s own scheme of augment- 
 ing and conservating the Body of Christ. Nothing is 
 essential to the conversion of the world but the union 
 and cooperation of Christians. Nothing is essential to 
 the union of Christians but the Apostles’ teaching or 
 testimony. Or does he choose to express the plan of 
 the Self-Existent in other words? Then he may change 
 the order, and say — The testimony of the Apostles is 
 the only and all-sufi&cient means of uniting all Chris- 
 tians. The union of Christians with the Apostles’ testi- 
 mony is all-sufficient and alone sufficient to the con- 
 version of the world. Neither truth alone nor union 
 alone is sufficient to subdue the unbelieving nations ; but 
 truth and union combined are omnipotent. They are 
 omnipotent, for God is in them and with them, and has 
 consecrated and blessed them for this very purpose.” 
 
 Scores of others have testified for the unity of 
 the Church — men like John Milton, the poet; 
 Johannes Coccejus, the scholar; Jeremy Taylor, 
 the preacher; John Locke, the philosopher; and 
 in more recent years, Philip Schatf, the theo- 
 logian, until the bibliography on Christian unity 
 extends into thousands of volumes. 
 
 Movements in the interest of unity have arisen. 
 Perhaps the most notable is that which arose 
 about the beginning of the nineteenth century in 
 the Presbyterian Church under the leadership of 
 Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander, which 
 was first called the “ Christian Association ” and 
 afterwards the “ Disciples of Christ.” The 
 agreement among themselves was very simple, 
 being an irenic effort toward a return to the be- 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 66 
 
 liefs and practices of the Church of the New Tes- 
 tament times in order to help in finding the way 
 to the unity of the Church of these times. Being 
 wearied with theological dissension they sought 
 for the simple faith of the early disciples. They 
 had not the slightest idea of starting another 
 communion. In fact they sought earnestly to 
 prevent it. Their position, however, involved 
 them in severe controversies. They had to pay 
 the price of separation for their convictions, 
 thereby adding another to the already too numer- 
 ous divisions in the Protestant household, and 
 later came a division among themselves over mis- 
 sionary methods and instrumental music, increas- 
 ing the scandal to two bodies in the United States 
 census tables. A movement in the Presbyterian 
 Church in Kentucky arose a few years earlier 
 under the name “ Christian.” These two move- 
 ments, however, united in part and the names 
 " Christian ” and “ Disciple of Christ ” have 
 been used interchangeably. They have become 
 one of the largest religious bodies in the United 
 States, having considerably over a million mem- 
 bers, with their missionary stations under nearly 
 every flag around the globe. They stand primar- 
 ily as a witness to the beliefs and practices of the 
 New Testament Church as a contribution to the 
 unity of the divided Church. Unfortunately, 
 however, the Disciples frequently yielded to the 
 results of severe controversies, maintaining in 
 many instances a policy of aloofness, which is 
 always sectarian, rather than a policy of inter- 
 
66 IF NOT A UNITED OHUECH— WHAT t 
 
 denominational fellowship to which they were 
 originally pledged. 
 
 A few years later at the instance of Frederick 
 William III, the Lutheran and Reformed 
 Churches effected a union under the title of the 
 “ United Evangelical State Church ” in Prussia 
 and six other German states, presenting for a 
 time a Protestant imity against Roman Catholic 
 unity. Neither party was required to renounce 
 any important doctrines, but dissension arose and 
 in a few years there were three separate Churches 
 where before had been two. The union move- 
 ments in Scotland have been more satisfactory, 
 although even there remnants have remained out 
 of the unions, thereby maintaining the divisive 
 line, as was the case in the union between the 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and the 
 Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a remnant of 
 the Cumberlands refusing to go into the union. 
 In 1870 the Old and New School Presbyterians 
 reunited. The union movement in Canada, be- 
 ginning in 1884 with the union of the six Method- 
 ist bodies, has been steadily going forward, al- 
 though occasionally encountering opposition. In 
 1911 the Northern Baptists and Free Baptists 
 united their general work preparatory to organic 
 union. The three largest Lutheran bodies in the 
 United States have united under the name 
 “ United Lutheran Church in America,” and the 
 union of various other bodies is already in the 
 atmosphere of friendly conferences. 
 
 Heartening reports come from the lands be- 
 
OHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 67 
 
 yond America. The various Presbyterian bodies 
 and the Reformed have united in Japan under a 
 common name; likewise union has been effected 
 between these bodies in India, China, Korea, 
 Mexico and Brazil. The Lutheran bodies in 
 India .have united; likewise the Methodists in 
 Japan as they have in New Zealand. The Angli- 
 cans of England, Canada and the United States 
 have united in China, Japan and India. Union 
 schools and hospitals have been established in 
 China, India, the Philippines, South America and 
 elsewhere, as for instance, in the Nanking uni- 
 versity, theological school and hospital the 
 Presbyterians, Methodists, Northern Baptists 
 and Disciples have united in that common 
 task. 
 
 The formation of the Evangelical Alliance in 
 1846 was a definite step toward unity. The pro- 
 posal from the House of Bishops of the Protes- 
 tant Episcopal Church in 1886, in which the Pan- 
 Anglican Council of Bishops at Lambeth Palace 
 in 1888 joined, opened one of the most interesting 
 and profitable discussions on Christian unity. It 
 especially marked the irenic element entering 
 largely into the discussion of a united Christen- 
 dom. A few years after came proposals from 
 the Congregational Church and still later move- 
 ments in behalf of unity arose generally in va- 
 rious parts of the world. The National Council 
 of the Evangelical Free Churches of England 
 was organized in 1895 for facilitating intercourse 
 and cooperation among Evangelical Free 
 
68 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH~WH AT ? 
 
 Churches. The Association for the Promotion 
 of the Unity of Christendom had its origin a few 
 years earlier. Its purpose is intercessory prayer 
 for the reunion of the Greek Orthodox, Roman 
 Catholic and Anglican communions. In 1896 the 
 Churchman’s Union was organized for the pur- 
 pose of cultivation of friendly relations between 
 the Church of England and all other Christian 
 bodies. 
 
 The twentieth century opened with the organi- 
 zation of the Christian Unity Association of Scot- 
 land, which seeks to maintain, foster and express 
 the consciousness of the underlying unity that is 
 shared by the many members of the different 
 Churches in Scotland. In 1906 and 1907 eighteen 
 resolutions were passed by a conference in Mel- 
 bourne composed of representatives of the 
 Church of England in Australia and Tasmania 
 and the Presbyterian Church of Australia ; later, 
 in 1911, these resolutions became the basis of a 
 conference in New York between Episcopalians 
 of the Christian Unity Foundation and Presbyte- 
 rians; and in 1912 between Episcopalians and 
 Congregationalists ; and in 1913 between Episco- 
 palians and Disciples.^ In 1908 the Federal 
 Cotmcil of the Churches of Christ in America 
 was organized for cooperation of the various 
 Protestant communions in service rather than in 
 an attempt to unite upon definitions of theology 
 and polity. Church federations among Protestant 
 
 * These resolutions are published in “ Towards Chris- 
 tian Unity” by Peter Ainslie. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 69 
 
 bodies have become the generally accepted pro- 
 cedure in most of the countries of the world. 
 
 The Edinburgh missionary conference marked 
 another definite step toward unity. In 1910 the 
 Protestant Episcopal Christian Unity Foundation 
 was organized for the purpose of promoting 
 Christian unity throughout the world by research 
 and conference. In that same year the Prot- 
 estant Episcopal Commission on a World Con- 
 ference on Faith and Order was appointed. 
 They have held a preparatory American confer- 
 ence and have sent three deputations abroad — 
 the first to the Church of England and the second 
 to the non-Anglican Churches of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, and the third to Europe for a visita- 
 tion to the continental Churches.* On the same 
 day, October 19, 1910, that the Episcopalians 
 appointed their commission the Disciples’ Asso- 
 ciation for the Promotion of Christian Unity was 
 organized for the purpose of intercessory prayer, 
 friendly conferences and distribution of irenic 
 literature in behalf of Christian unity. This or- 
 ganization named Pentecost Sunday as the day 
 for special prayers for and sermons on Christian 
 unity in all Churches.* The Presbyterians al- 
 ready had a committee on Church Cooperation 
 and Union. That year the Congregatlonalists ap- 
 pointed a Committee on Comity, Federation and 
 Unity. In 1911 the Fellowship movement was 
 started in England for the cultivation of corpor- 
 ate prayer and thought for a new spiritual fellow- 
 ^ See Appendix. 
 
60 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 ship and communion with all branches of the 
 Christian Church. The Kikuyu conference in 
 British East Africa in 1913 included Anglicans, 
 Presbyterians, Friends, Methodists, Seventh Day 
 Adventists and the African Inland Mission, with 
 the prospects of the ultimate union of the native 
 Churches, but the protest from the Bishop of 
 Zanzibar brought a cancellation of all the agree- 
 ments. However, a second conference was held 
 in Kikuyu in 1918. In that year the Second In- 
 terim Report of the British committee appeared ; ‘ 
 likewise that year came the call from the Scanda- 
 navian Churches through Archbishop Nathan 
 Soderblom.^ In that same year the General As- 
 sembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. 
 S. A. convened in Philadelphia a council on 
 organic union of all evangelical Protestant 
 Churches of America. An ad interim com- 
 mittee representing sixteen Protestant bodies 
 was appointed to meet monthly for conference 
 relative to defining a plan of procedure. In 1919 
 came the Interchurch World Movement of North 
 America for discovering the facts and projecting 
 an adequate programme for Protestantism in the 
 world. If the hundreds of millions of dollars 
 which this organization is raising are not ad- 
 ministered interdenominationally, but instead are 
 administered denominationally, it will strengthen 
 sectarianism, for there is not a denomination in 
 Christendom that can be entrusted with great 
 sums of money without that denomination’s at- 
 ^ See Appendix. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 61 
 
 tempting to strengfthen its denominational bound- 
 aries and thereby for a time defeating the will 
 of God on earth. Sectarianism will contend to 
 the last ditch, but these movements for co- 
 operation and unity are rising upon such perma- 
 nent bases and advancing so positively toward 
 larger fellowships that they are constantly fur- 
 nishing outlets to ventures of faith. 
 
 Movements not dealing directly with Christian 
 unity have arisen and contributed directly to its 
 interests, such as the Young Men’s Christian 
 Association, the Young Women’s Christian Asso- 
 ciation, the Christian Endeavour Society, the 
 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Inter- 
 national Sunday-school lessons, the Student 
 Volunteers and the Laymen’s Missionary Move- 
 ment. This catalogue of unions, unity organiza- 
 tions, federations, conferences and interdenomi- 
 national organizations might continue, including 
 many organizations and conferences as important 
 as those I have named. Christian unity is on the 
 lips of the multitudes to-day and is gradually be- 
 coming as universal in its discussion as political 
 democracy. It has grown in spite of protests, 
 bitter controversies and uncharitable practices, 
 until its reasonableness is finding place in the 
 thought of the world. 
 
 III. The outstanding and definite proposals* 
 for unity in these times may be summed up under ♦ 
 those proposals that have been presented through * 
 the years by the Roman Catholics, by the Protes- 1 
 tant Episcopalians and by the Disciples of Christ, I 
 
62 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT ! 
 
 Others have spoken from time to time regarding 
 Christian unity, especially the Presbyterians and 
 the Congregationalists, but the three bodies named 
 have made this their theme in season and out of 
 season until it is not unfair to others to single 
 .out these three. The first centers in papal 
 • supremacy, the second in the episcopate, and the 
 'third in a democracy, with Christ as the over- 
 t ruling Head, however, in all three proposals. 
 
 To be perfectly accurate regarding the Roman 
 Catholics, I asked his Eminence, Cardinal Gib- 
 bons, to state in his own language the proposals 
 of the Roman Catholics. This he has kindly 
 done in a personal letter in the following state- 
 ment: 
 
 “ I heartily join in the effort for Christian 
 unity, for schism is a curse, whereas union is a 
 blessing, But Jesus Christ has pointed out the 
 only means by which this unity can be brought 
 about and maintained, viz., the recognition of 
 Peter and his successors as the Head of the 
 Church. Build upon this foundation and you 
 will not erect a tower of Babel, nor build upon 
 sand. If all Christian sects were imited with the 
 center of unity, then the scattered hosts of Chris- 
 tendom would form an army which atheism and 
 infidelity could not long withstand. Then, in- 
 deed, all could exclaim with Balaam : ‘ How 
 beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy 
 tents, O Israel.’ ” 
 
 The proposals of the Protestant Episcopalians 
 in 1886 and concurred in by the Church of Eng- 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 63 
 
 land in 1888 are contained in the Chicago-Lam- 
 beth articles, which are as follows : 
 
 “ 1 . The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments as the revealed word of God. 
 
 “ II. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient state- 
 ment of the Christian faith. 
 
 “ III. The two sacraments, — Baptism and the 
 Supper of the Lord, — ministered with unfailing 
 use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the 
 elements ordained by Him. 
 
 “ IV. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted 
 in the methods of its administration to the vary- 
 ing needs of the nations and peoples called of 
 God into the unity of His Church.” 
 
 The proposals of the Disciples of Christ may 
 be stated as follows: 
 
 (1) A catholic name for individuals, such as 
 “ Disciples,” “ Christians,” etc., and for the whole 
 body, “Church of Christ,” “Church of God,” 
 “ Christian Church,” etc. 
 
 (2) A catholic creed such as expressed in the 
 words of the Apostle Peter, “Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God.” 
 
 (3) catholic book — the holy Scriptures — 
 as sufficient for the rule of Christian life. 
 
 (4) A catholic administration of the or- 
 dinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as 
 practiced in the New Testament times and with 
 the use of Christ’s words. 
 
 (5) A catholic polity of Church government, 
 recognizing the universal suffrage and priesthood 
 of all believers. 
 
64 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 (6) A catholic brotherhood, holding fellow- 
 ship in the Lord’s Supper with all who have re- 
 ceived Jesus as Lord and Saviour. 
 
 It must be recognized that some of the most 
 distinguished people in the history of the world 
 have held membership in the bodies represented 
 by these three proposals and at the same time 
 there have been among them some of the most 
 devout souls in the history of the whole Church. 
 Consequently these proposals are on equality and 
 deserve equally courteous consideration. It is 
 not my purpose to discuss them at this time.* 
 They must stand on their merits. Only it seems 
 preeminently pertinent to inquire. Have they 
 functioned well in behalf of Christian unity? To 
 this hard question one must face the answers. 
 To the first proposals the answer is in the severe 
 division of the eleventh century and the severer 
 division of the sixteenth century; to the second 
 proposals the answer is in the three divisive and 
 unreconciled episcopates and several smaller 
 episcopates; to the third proposals the answer is 
 in the division of about four hundred thousand 
 members going off on such minor matters as 
 missionary methods and Church music. What- 
 ever one may think of these answers, which are 
 the cold facts of history, the growth of Christian 
 unity out of which these have come and of which 
 these are parts, must find its blossom in an atmos- 
 phere more pregnant with the Spirit of our Lord 
 
 ’ In the author’s Yale Lectures “ The Message of the 
 Disciples for the Union of the Church,” he discusses the 
 Disciples, Fleming H. Revell Co. 
 
CHEISTIAN UIHTY : ITS GEOWTH 65 
 
 Jesus Christ. Our need is not so much for a 
 plan as for a spirit — the Spirit of Christ. A 
 common creed will not solve the problem; only 
 a common spirit will — the Spirit of the common 
 Saviour of us all in the hearts of those who 
 believe in Him. “If any man hath not the 
 Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” We are not 
 depending so much upon a common experience 
 for the way to unity as upon a common revela- 
 tion. Christianity is of God through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. 
 
 It is important to remember that birds do not 
 go back into their shells, that tulip blossoms do 
 not go back into their bulbs, that Christianity 
 could not go back into Judaism and that Protes- 
 tantism cannot go back under the rule of Rome. 
 Neither can Protestantism remain where it is, 
 for it was only partially triumphant in the six- 
 teenth century Reformation, which is attested by 
 the divisions among Protestants and their semi- 
 Roman theologies, especially those pertaining to 
 the unexplainable things in religion. The prin- 
 ciples of biology must prevail if our growth is 
 to be toward God. The nearer we get to truth, 
 the more simple and comprehensive it is, as the 
 more of God we possess, the more humble and 
 willing we are. Christianity is not a system of 
 concealment, but instead is the way to the full 
 and complete revealing of truth. 
 
 It is likewise important to remember that an * 
 ecclesiastical unity like that of Rome is both un- < 
 desirable and impossible, nor is a multiplicity of ' 
 
66 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT! 
 
 . denominations as in Protestantism desirable. It 
 may be said here also that no student of this prob- 
 lem is looking for unity by the way of uniformity, 
 any more than one looks for uniformity in a man 
 and woman when they marry in that they shall 
 have the same colour of eyes, the same colour of 
 hair, be the same height, be the same weight, etc. 
 No, we do not look for unity by any such uni- 
 formity, but we do look for the man and the 
 woman who marry to conform to the will of God 
 in staying married and not conform to their wills 
 and caprices in getting divorced. Christ can 
 have but one bride, but organized Christianity 
 has proudly made of Him a polygamous Lord 
 with nearly two hundred brides, some of these 
 brides claiming Him exclusively their own, while 
 others willingly share Him with the other brides 
 ' of Christendom, but in either event a divided 
 » Church fosters polygamy upon Jesus Christ, 
 , making Him the husband of many brides instead 
 “of the husband of one. Happily it appears sure 
 that for a united Christendom we must go 
 beyond any one of the present Christian or- 
 ganizations, for it must be frankly said that, 
 after surveying the Church forces of the whole 
 world, there is no organized Church to-day 
 that meets the need. The first step toward 
 unity, however, appears to be the unity of the 
 Protestant household, for if the Protestants can- 
 not get together there need be no further talk, 
 for the present at least, about the unity of the 
 other parts of Christendom. This Protestant 
 
CHEISTIAU UNITY : ITS GEOWTH 67 
 
 unity is possible now with liberty in matters of 
 forms, organizations, etc., but it must be a unity 
 in Christ as Lord and Saviour and a coopera- 
 tive brotherhood that is not so much concerned 
 with getting its rights as it is in manifesting the 
 will of God in the attitude of brother to brother 
 in all international social, economic and spiritual 
 relations. 
 
 Blossoms are the promises of fruit. Since in 
 these times the blossoms of Christian unity are in 
 evidence around the world, we must be coura- 
 geous in our expectations of the fruit and at the 
 same time be bold in our ventures of faith, for 
 ventures are the footprints of prophecies. Unity 
 may not come as we expect it. The atmosphere 
 of these times is too cloudy for us to see clearly, 
 but that need not affect our confidence in the rule 
 of the will of God. The unity of Christendom 
 must find its basis in Christ, satisfactory to Him, 
 Who is our Lord, and to all Christians, who are 
 our brothers. Present day transactions are show- 
 ing us that the trend of affairs is away from 
 ecclesiastical autocracy and is toward Christian 
 democracy. All autocratic ecclesiasticisms will 
 change or decay. Times are changing and 
 changing rapidly. According to Professor Guyot 
 the plant life is divided into three periods. The 
 first is very slow, the second is more rapid and 
 the third is of whirling rapidity. The first is the 
 time of the roots’ getting fast hold on the earth, 
 the second is the stem shooting up and the third 
 is the period of blossom and fruit. 
 
68 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT t 
 
 • It is so with the Church. In the first period 
 
 • the roots were taking hold in the depths of our 
 ’ humanity. It was a long period and sometimes 
 
 it seemed that the darkness almost obscured the 
 light, but there were noble souls in those days. I 
 doubt not but if we had been living in the time of 
 Francis of Assisi even some of us would have 
 been Franciscans and some of our women would 
 have been disciples of Catherine of Genoa. That 
 type of religion has passed, but those days had 
 their problems and Christ was not without His 
 witnesses. The roots of a living faith went down, 
 down into our humanity. 
 
 . In the second period the plant has been sending 
 . up its stem, toughening and growing in these days 
 . of Christian activity and world-wide service. 
 
 • We have already seen the necessity of closer co- 
 ‘ operation. Multitudes of us are feeling that the 
 
 time has come when we must stand together. 
 •Federation is a contribution to this end and at 
 •the same time is a prophecy of closer affiliation. 
 .We gladly use it now, but we are eagerly look- 
 
 • ing to the time when there shall be a united 
 . Church in full conformity to the prayer of our 
 ‘Lord, for nothing else will satisfy this divine 
 'dream. Some day the third period will be upon 
 - us. I know not when nor how, but God’s or- 
 ‘chards will be in full bloom and the fruit will be 
 *a united Church of Christ on earth. Says that 
 
 Hindu scholar, Paul Karishka, in one of his 
 books, “ Jesus of Nazareth is a life, a life, a life.’* 
 Do not forget this. In it lies the secret of a 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS GROWTH 69 
 
 united Christendom. Some of us are already 
 feeling it and consequently are looking sympa- 
 thetically on the positions of others. We are 
 trying to get the other man’s viewpoint, thereby 
 appreciating more fully what he stands for. The 
 task is profoundly grave and far more complex 
 than most of us recognize. 
 
 We are already freeing ourselves from sec- 
 tarian thought and are thinking in the sphere of 
 the universal. We are beginning to see that in « 
 the sadly divided House of Christ, including i 
 Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and ' 
 Protestant, are earnest Christians, as earnestly ' 
 desiring to know God and to walk in His paths • 
 as we are. “ We offend against the spirit of ' 
 Christianity if we are self-assertive, if we con- 
 tend for a side, if we cannot think it is possible 
 that we are mistaken, if we take all our opinions 
 as convictions, if we do not try to learn from one 
 another. All these offenses insulate us from one 
 another, break the circuit, and so far disable the 
 religion of Christ as an organ for discerning the 
 will of God.” Repentance of the whole Church — 
 a repentance of us all in terms of a new attitude 
 of mind and heart — will do more to bring a new 
 day in the Church of Christ for its growth into 
 unity than any other experience in the possibility 
 of the human soul. Sectarianism must be abol- * 
 ished. Henceforth let no man glory in his de- t 
 nomination ; that is sectarianism : but let all men t 
 glory in Christ and practice brotherhood with all ' 
 men ; that is Christianity. 
 
Ill 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY; ITS OUTLOOK 
 
 O N one occasion in the discussion of an 
 international issue in the British Parlia- 
 ment the Prime Minister said to his col- 
 leagues, “ Gentlemen, you must study larger 
 maps.” This applies with equal force to our- 
 selves in our outlook upon Christian unity. At 
 the very outset, discouraging as it may be, we 
 must not only include the whole Church in our 
 conception — Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, 
 Anglican, Protestant and all others who accept 
 Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, but look be- 
 • yond where these divisions are now to what the 
 * Church of Christ ought to be. To many this may 
 • seem a Utopian dream. I grant that sometimes 
 from present indications impossibility looms so 
 high that the way appears to be even impassable 
 to human vision, but if one yields to his preju- 
 dices, affirming that certain bodies are not to be 
 considered as desirable members in this fellow- 
 ship of unity, such a one forthwith puts himself 
 out of the honest search for the paths of truth. 
 
 - Every Christian needs every other Christian for 
 • the task of redeeming a lost world, as well as for 
 'Completing the fullness of the Christian life, and 
 
 70 
 
CHEISTIAK UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 71 
 
 .Qirist needs the whole Church to fill up His 
 -glory. His need, our need and the world’s need 
 crowd the future with a hope that lingers like 
 the morning star. 
 
 The ecclesiastical systems of these various 
 bodies may appear as irreconcilable as the as- 
 tronomical views of Pythagoras, Copernicus, 
 Kepler, Galileo and Newton, but there are un- 
 derlying truths in all of these bodies as there were 
 in the crudest conceptions of Pythagoras and 
 Copernicus regarding the planetary paths. At 
 the same time we must recognize the great bar- 
 riers, made greater by history and prejudice than 
 they were at the beginning. It is our task to dis- 
 cover the underlying foundations of unity 
 throughout the whole Church, to reduce them to 
 as simple and comprehensive elements as possible, 
 and to build up from those indisputable founda- 
 tions. We would be blind not to recognize the 
 great barriers in the way of progress, but the pur- 
 pose of Christianity is to remove barriers. He 
 loses his chance in life who sits idly by nursing 
 his prejudices and standing picket guard by his 
 traditions while a world is dying of hunger for 
 God. Both the Old and New Testaments pro- 
 claim in the ringing voices of Isaiah and John the 
 task of Jehovah’s servants. They say, 
 
 “Prepare ye In the wilderness the way of Jehovah; 
 make level in the desert a highway for our God. Every 
 valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall 
 be made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and 
 the rough places a plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall 
 
72 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the 
 mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it.” ‘ 
 
 It is the graphic picture of Jehovah’s workmen 
 adjusting our undeveloped race, symbolized by 
 such terms as “ wilderness,” “ desert,” “ high- 
 way,” “valley,” “mountain,” “hill,” “uneven” 
 and “ rough places.” But the workmen have 
 fallen out among themselves, leaving the work 
 undone or inefficiently done, for only a sympa- 
 thetic union of workmen can accomplish a task 
 of such divine appointment. Consequently our 
 outlook is crowded with enormous tasks — the 
 greatest in the dream of the farthest visioned 
 man. Were there indications of perpetual divi- 
 sion among us, I should drop into despair and 
 find my only consolation in the hope that a rem- 
 nant from among the nations was the best after 
 all that Jesus could win to Himself. But Jesus 
 died for all and nothing short of a redeemed 
 world will satisfy Him or those who follow Him. 
 It is to that end that we give ourselves to the 
 outlook of Christian unity. 
 
 • I. We must face the facts. The Church is 
 ' divided and a divisive Christianity is weakened. 
 ' To say that Jesus Christ rules in His Church to-day 
 I is a cunning device' of shifting the blame of the sin 
 
 • of division from our own shoulders to the shoul- 
 •ders of Christ, and so not infrequently we hear 
 - arguments justifying division on the ground that 
 
 • it is in the providence of a wise heavenly Father 
 
 * Isa. 40 : 3-5 ; Luke 3 : 4-6. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 73 
 
 ' and that all these divisions stand for some definite 
 . truth. Such arguments find their analogy in those 
 .erstwhile arguments advanced in support of hu- 
 • man slavery, polygamy, etc. If the Episcopalians 
 or the Disciples or the Presbyterians or the Meth- 
 odists or the Baptists or the Congregationalists or 
 the Lutherans or the New Jerusalem Church or 
 the Church of God in Christ Jesus or the Old 
 Two-Seed-in-the- Spirit Predestination Baptists 
 and so on, including the two hundred varieties, 
 Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, etc., possess 
 certain divine truth that no other possesses, why 
 should an Episcopalian or a Disciple or a Pres- 
 byterian or a Methodist or a Baptist or a Con- 
 gregationalist or a Lutheran or a member of the 
 New Jerusalem Church or a member of the 
 Church of God in Christ Jesus or an Old Two- 
 Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestination Baptist go 
 through this world with a two-hundredth part 
 of truth when by taking in what some of the 
 others possess he might get fifty per cent, of 
 divine truth? Or if it be acknowledged that he 
 have capacity for the whole truth he might 
 possess the two hundred parts. This is all re- 
 ligious nonsense. All of these divisions contain 
 truth, but it is that truth that is common to them 
 all. Their peculiarities are the things upon which 
 they have become divided and somewhere in these 
 peculiarities are the deposits of error. Remove 
 the error and truth will flow together like water 
 in a common channel. The Church as the world* 
 knows it does not represent the character of • 
 
74 IFNOT ATTKITEDCHUEOH— WHAT? 
 
 ‘Jesus Christ. These long, fast and established 
 •divisions, maintaining irreconcilable discord in 
 •the House of God, mark the masterpiece of 
 • Satan. We only confuse our thinking when we 
 attempt to delude ourselves in believing that 
 these conditions are according to the will of God. 
 It is our sin and Jesus Christ waits for us who 
 believe in Him to adopt the ministry of recon- 
 ciliation and thereby prepare the way for His 
 rule in His Church. 
 
 Discuss any theme — ^national or international, 
 social or economic, political or religious — 
 and underlying all of these is justice, freedom, 
 brotherhood and righteousness, no one of which 
 can properly function through a divisive Chris- 
 tianity, much less the functioning of all for the 
 betterment of mankind. Every Christian, whether 
 Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican or 
 Protestant, is a member of a Christian party. 
 So long as the Church is divided I cannot be 
 otherwise than a member of some party in Chris- 
 tendom unless I sever my relations with Christi- 
 anity. The lesser of the two evils is maintaining 
 party membership. If any dissent from this 
 position of party membership it is finding in his 
 own party the sectarian claim of being the one 
 and only Church with all other parties numbered 
 among the sects — ^not an uncommon claim, how- 
 ever, among many bodies; but this need not be 
 discussed here, other than to say it is a remnant 
 of that sectarian Jewish position that they were 
 the highly favoured of the Almighty and all 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 75 
 
 Gentiles were dogs. Such sectarian conceit is 
 destined to crumble before fair-minded and en- 
 lightened thinking, so that humiliating as it may 
 be the whole Church must sooner or later face 
 the fact that every division is a party in Christen- 
 dom and all of us are members of one or the other 
 of these parties. 
 
 The next move is for us to rise above our 
 party barriers and to think interdenominationally. 
 That is to say, instead of elimination, until we 
 shall find ourselves tied down to the thinking of 
 one party because that chanced to be the party 
 into which we were bom or that is our choice of 
 membership, we must proceed by the way of 
 comprehension, as though each of us held mem- 
 bership in all the parties of Christendom, appro- 
 priating the worth of each in our quest for 
 the broken pieces of the sacred chalice, which 
 somehow and somewhere will be fitted together 
 by the scarred hands of Christ. For myself I 
 claim a place among those who are thinking in- 
 terdenominationally in this royal quest. I will 
 not be checked in my thinking either by my party 
 affiliation or my party traditions, nor am I bound 
 to think to-day what I thought yesterday. There 
 must be freedom for entrance into the future. 
 
 No man can allow himself to be tied either to • 
 history or tradition if he has a real concern for . 
 the unity of the Church of Christ. If unity is . 
 to come only by the methods of his own party, 
 then to be free and fair he must accord that right 
 to every other party, which means a continuation 
 
76"^IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 of our present party lines ad infinitum. These 
 party lines must give way to a larger freedom and 
 to a larger measure of genuine religion. The 
 concern for our party must be secondary to our 
 concern for the will of God in saving a lost world, 
 which is dependent upon a united Church. T ragic 
 issue! It is either a united Church according 
 to the will of God and a saved world; or a 
 divided Church according to the will of men and 
 an infidel world. It is a choice between guard- 
 ing the past with its mixed history of good and 
 evil and making the future an improvement over 
 the past by a united Christendom for the good of 
 all. For myself — and each man must begin with 
 himself — I am facing the future irrespective of 
 what the past has been. I am not very much in- 
 terested in preserving denominational autonomies 
 and denominational traditions. Jesus gave His 
 life away and at the same time gave a divine 
 principle when He says, 
 
 “ Whosoever would save his life shall lose it ; but 
 whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, the same shall 
 save it.” * 
 
 I am perfectly willing to let the histories and 
 traditions of the denominations — my own in- 
 cluded — take care of themselves in the siftings 
 of time. Whatever is good will survive in the 
 succession of Christian experiences and the evil 
 will perish. The dead do not need us ; only the 
 living perish for lack of help. 
 
 ’ Luke 9 : 24. 
 
CHEISTIAN UmTY ; ITS OUTLOOK 77 
 
 If in preserving the past its purpose is to find 
 justification for every division of Christians — 
 and what is accorded to one division must be ac- 
 corded to all — then I pray that what man remem- 
 bers God may forget, until He shall say to us, 
 
 “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgres- 
 sions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; return unto Me; for I 
 have redeemed thee.” * 
 
 I would be untrue to my own heart and that of ' 
 my fellows if I were not ready to say that, al- ’ 
 though my own party will stand comparison in ■ 
 growth and service with any of the American ‘ 
 parties, I would be willing that all its history and ' 
 tradition should be blotted out if thereby it would ' 
 hasten the unity of Christendom; nay, more, I ' 
 am willing that I myself shall be forgot in the ' 
 remembrance of Christ if thereby His Church • 
 may be one. ' 
 
 The things that have divided the Church have 
 been deeply rooted in our divisive human natures. 
 The flesh has proven itself stronger than the 
 Spirit and has triumphed for a time, but the 
 triumph of the Spirit is the ultimate result of the 
 implanting of the Spirit. All movements toward 
 unity are prophecies of ultimate unity. We are 
 already nearer to the goal than many of us think. 
 When we discover that many of our convictions 
 are merely long established prejudices and when 
 these prejudices pass under the review of 
 brotherly kindness and truth, our party barriers 
 
 ‘Isa. 44:22. 
 
78 IF NOT A UNITED CHUEOH— WHAT I 
 
 will appear but trifling things by the side of 
 winning a world to righteousness. When a Dis- 
 ciple married an Episcopalian the former wrote 
 asking if it would be wrong for her to join her 
 husband’s Church. I answered. No, certainly 
 not. And the same would be true were the case 
 reversed and if the Episcopal clergyman’s in- 
 terest in the Church of Christ is above his interest 
 in his party, he would likewise give the same 
 answer. Either the wife should join the hus- 
 band’s Church or the husband should join the 
 wife’s Church, depending on local conditions and 
 individual circumstances. A divided Church is 
 bad enough, but a divided home is worse. The 
 unity of the Church must begin in the unity of 
 the home. Such sectarian talk as “ I can never 
 be anything but a Protestant Episcopalian,” or 
 “ I can never be anything but a Presbyterian,” or 
 “ I can never be anything but a Methodist,” or 
 ” I can never be anything but a Baptist,” or “ I 
 can never be anything but a Disciple,” etc., ought 
 never to be mentioned among those who are fol- 
 lowers of Jesus Christ. The only question worth 
 asking is. Am I such a Christian that I can be 
 a real Christian to every other Christian in the 
 whole Church? 
 
 If I be allowed the same freedom that I ac- 
 cord to others, that is to say, eliminating avowed 
 loyalty to the standards of any party in contra- 
 distinction from the standards of some other 
 party, I could hold membership in many of the 
 religious bodies with no awkwardness whatso- 
 
CHEISTIAl? UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 79 
 
 ever, affirming in each party my simple disciple- 
 ship in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. I now 
 hold membership in a party, some of whose vary- 
 ing ethical standards I do not endorse. Why 
 then, at the same time, should I not hold member- 
 ship in another party, some of whose theological 
 standards I do not endorse? Is theology more 
 vital than ethics? Changing from one Church to 
 another makes for sectarian pride, but holding 
 interchurch membership — in different Churches 
 at the same time — would rebuke sectarian pride 
 and make for complete fellowship among Chris- 
 tians which is now impossible. Whatever my 
 ordination once was and whatever episcopal ordi- 
 nation now is, neither is of such vital impor- 
 tance as to withhold me from receiving the 
 latter if it would contribute to the unity of 
 the Church — not, however, in any way recog- 
 nizing apostolic succession with its assumed 
 channel of special grace, but in cheerful recogni- 
 tion of the fact of episcopacy as one of the modes 
 of Church government from very early times. 
 Surely in the Church of the future there must 
 be this freedom in accepting ordination by cour- 
 tesy. All persons of orderly thinking recognize 
 that there should be some kind of superintendency 
 in Christian work. The mere title of the super- 
 intendent is secondary, but the fact of a constitu- 
 tional superintendency is of meritorious worth. 
 
 Perhaps some might complain that to be equally 
 at home with a forward looking Episcopalian 
 or a forward looking Disciple indicates an 
 ethical insincerity in one’s thinking. Such com- 
 plaints are based upon sectarian attitudes which 
 
80 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT t 
 
 have been maintained through the years by 
 the force of history and prejudice. Do not Epis- 
 copalians, Presbyterians and Disciples believe in 
 the divine Sonship of Jesus? Have they not 
 shown the fruit of their obedience to Him as 
 Lord and Saviour? Is their interpretation of 
 Him not the very same ? Do they not recognize 
 the Scriptures as the word of God? Has not the 
 Holy Spirit used them? To each of these ques- 
 tions the answer is unhesitatingly in the affirma- 
 tive. Then the words of the Apostle Peter 
 significantly ring in my ears, 
 
 “If then God gave unto them the like gift . . . 
 who was I, that I could withstand God ? ” * 
 
 The difficulty here is that the peculiarities of 
 these bodies, such as Church governments, forms 
 of worship and in general the way each body does 
 things, have been lifted in the minds of some to 
 equality with the fundamental principles of our 
 faith. Against this I protest, for it cannot be 
 that Church governments, forms of worship, sys- 
 tems of theology, etc., are in the realm of vital 
 Christianity nor can they by any force of logic, 
 historic data or experience be put on a parity with 
 vital Christianity. With our outlook upon the 
 future there is abundant evidence that in the 
 years to come this will be the prevailing position. 
 In common with many others I yield to the liberty 
 of opinion in these matters, but I will not swerve 
 in my conviction that Jesus Christ is the only be- 
 ’Acts 11:17. 
 
CHEISTIAIT TJinTY : ITS OUTLOOK 81 
 
 gotten Son of God and our Lord and Saviour, 
 that in His death and resurrection He has given 
 us the real meaning of life, that His Holy Spirit 
 has the right of way in making our wills channels 
 for the will of God on earth, that we are under 
 obligations as disciples of Jesus to attain unto the 
 unity of the faith for the evangelization of the 
 world and its Christianization in all human rela- 
 tions — social, economic and international — and 
 that the badge of our discipleship is the costly 
 insignia of love. Everything else must be sec- 
 ondary in our outlook on the future. The sim- 
 plicity and democracy of Jesus have in them ele- 
 ments of such permanent value that neither per- 
 secution nor unbrotherly criticism can wither. 
 They must live. 
 
 t II. The Hebrews were named as stewards of 
 ’ the oracles of God ; the Christians were named as 
 
 • stewards of the Spirit of God. The passing from 
 'the stewardship of the oracles to the stewardship 
 
 • of the Spirit indicated the abrogation of external 
 -authorities in spiritual matters and definitely in- 
 
 • augurated the religion of the Spirit. Neverthe- 
 less gradually there grew up the authority of the 
 ‘Church, whose claim to infallibility logically must 
 ■culminate in an infallible pope even if it took 
 •until 1870 to reach It. On the other hand, the In- 
 
 • fallible Church must be offset by the authority of 
 . an infallible Bible, the logical conclusion of which 
 .must culminate in an Infallible interpretation, 
 . which crystallizes in legalism or the authority of 
 
 • the letter of the law. It could not have been the 
 
82 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 divine purpose that the Church and the Bible 
 should have been put in opposition to each other ; 
 consequently the Roman Catholics abused the 
 first by their own arrogant claims and the Protes- 
 tants abused the latter by their divisive interpre- 
 tations, so that in the eyes of the world neither 
 the Church nor the Bible attained to places of in- 
 fallibility. In this departure the whole Church 
 has suffered — Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, 
 Anglican and Protestant, so that it is evident that 
 both the Church and theology have fallen from 
 their fictitious heights. Both the Church and the 
 Bible were to be servants of His religion — not 
 ' taskmasters. The Gospel of God must not 
 
 . be detached from either the Church or the 
 , Bible, but it must be released both from the 
 “ bondage of the Church and the legalism of the 
 • Bible. Jesus Christ came to make men free. 
 His religion is the religion of the Spirit. Be- 
 cause it is the religion of the Spirit He gave 
 those severe words regarding the unpardonable- 
 ness of transgression against the Spirit. It could 
 not be otherwise. He says, 
 
 “ Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto 
 men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be 
 forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against 
 the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoso- 
 ever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, It shall not be 
 forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which 
 is to come.” * 
 
 *Matt. 12:31, 32. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 83 
 
 These words mark a stern limitation to man’s 
 unbridled course. Every kind of sin against God 
 and our fellows may be forgiven through repent- 
 ance, but the sin against the Spirit is unpardon- 
 able, so deadly when committed that there is no 
 desire for repentance, and concerning this sin 
 there need be no prayers offered. Jesus and His 
 disciples partly unveiled it to the human eye, leav- 
 ing it purposely in vague definitions with its 
 warning wrapped in mysterious isolation and 
 with its weird shadow reaching across the cen- 
 turies. Discussions of it go back into the early 
 history of the Church, when conflicting sects 
 charged each other with it because of certain 
 creedal declarations, down to these times when 
 some individual drops into despair, believing that 
 he has committed it. Whatever be the opinions it 
 is usually agreed that the warning is addressed to 
 believers, rather than to infidels or flagrant 
 sinners. The Pharisees, whom Jesus warned, 
 were as respectable and devout a community of 
 worshipers then as may be found in any Chris- 
 tian community now, either Roman Catholic or 
 Protestant. It is the cry of alarm. It is the call 
 to avoid the possibility of “ an eternal sin.” 
 
 The vocation of the Spirit Is motion and 
 change. We are living in a world of tremendous 
 energy — the floating clouds, the moving sea, the 
 blooming flowers, the growing children — all 
 evince a significant energy. The Scriptures open 
 with the statement that the Spirit moved upon the 
 face of the waters. It was another way of af- 
 
84 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 firming the commitment of the world to the laws 
 of motion and change. These are the laws of 
 life because they are the laws of the Spirit. 
 Nature, history, thought, life, experience and re- 
 ligion are continuous. Vegetables and animals 
 have their beginning, their growth, their maturity 
 only to start in again with a beginning and de- 
 velopment through growth into maturity. It is 
 the song of every seed as it is dropped into the 
 soil and the first chirp of the bird as it pips its 
 shell for its new world. The changes in nature 
 are challenges to the divided Church to attain 
 unto the unity of the faith, for life implies both 
 continuity and change. Life must either progress 
 by this method, which gives to it charm and 
 beauty, or it must degenerate and decay. 
 
 It may be said that physics regards matter 
 solely as the vehicle of energy. Then is there 
 no lesson for us in this? Here is a boy grow- 
 ing to manhood, a colony growing to state- 
 hood, a lily flowering, a sand-dune growing. 
 These are four commonplace conditions that 
 deserve observation. All are supernatural in 
 the sense that they are alike expressions of 
 the invisible solidarity of the universe, the 
 imminence of law and the imperishability of 
 energy. “ Jehovah is good to all and all His 
 tender mercies are over all His works.” Out of 
 the heart of the growing child comes the appeal 
 to attain to unity in the family of God. Out of 
 the history of the growing state, out of the per- 
 fumed blossom of the flower, from the desert top 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY ; ITS OUTLOOK 86 
 
 of the sand-dunes there comes one and the same 
 call and that is the awakening from what we are 
 to what we may be in spiritual experience. The 
 temporary arrest of our Godward movement is 
 grief to the Spirit, leaving stunted souls, as seen 
 in the stunted growths of trees and animals, when 
 conditions occurred which arrested their growth. 
 Its permanent arrest produces a deadening con- 
 dition, which the Spirit life neither here nor here- 
 after can affect. 
 
 The difference between grieving the Spirit and 
 sinning against the Spirit must be observed. Both 
 are sins and we are forbidden to do either, but 
 they differ in character. It is a common experi- 
 ence of the soul to transgress in its attempts to 
 live for God. This transgression is grief to the 
 Spirit. For this grief to the Spirit there is a 
 sense of guilt in the soul and a desire to pray, 
 which is met with abundant mercy. But in the 
 instance of the sin against the Spirit there ap- 
 pears to be no sense of guilt because conscience 
 is dead and consequently there is no place for real 
 prayer. It is a permanently arrested growth of 
 the Spirit’s work in the Church, expressing itself 
 in satisfaction with the divided state of the 
 Church with its conceit of party spirit and in the 
 indifference to a change of mind, as illustrated 
 in the fixed, contended Pharisees, to whom Jesus 
 made the remark regarding the sin against the 
 Spirit. The Pharisees were approaching this sin. 
 The words of Jesus were a warning to wake up 
 from their spiritual stupor in order that the 
 
86 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 Spirit might move them to the acceptance of 
 more truth, bringing such changes in their lives 
 as would prevent their sinning against the Spirit’s 
 function of moving the soul Godward. 
 
 A permanently arrested growth leads to the 
 death of conscience. The sin of the fixed is the 
 most disastrous sin in the world. It is strikingly 
 illustrated in the Pharisees and other Jewish de- 
 nominations’ in the time of Christ refusing to 
 change, but instead clinging to their old-time tradi- 
 tions and rejecting the leadership of the Spirit. 
 Its blight lies upon the continent of Asia, where re- 
 ligions have stood boldly in their protests against 
 change. Originally, and still intrinsically, Chris- 
 tianity is the religion of motion and change be- 
 cause it is the religion of the Spirit. As brilliant 
 as were the philosophers and poets of Greece and 
 Rome, it was the Hebrew who first of all discov- 
 ered the possibilities of man’s spiritual future and 
 he therefore stands first amongthe prophets of the 
 human soul. This was the force of Joel’s proph- 
 ecy and the significance of its emphasis on the 
 day of Pentecost — from a few prophets like 
 Moses, David, Isaiah and others, all might be- 
 come prophets, themselves penitent and calling 
 others to repentance on their way to the attain- 
 ment of unity. Jesus said little in denunciation 
 of the sinner; He did better than that; He in- 
 spired men to virtue, which marked a revolution 
 in human life. It Is the function of the Spirit to 
 release this revolutionary inspiration from the 
 bondage of the letter and tradition into spiritual 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY ; ITS OUTLOOK 87 
 
 freedom, moving constantly and changing in new 
 experiences with God. 
 
 The warning of Jesus to the Pharisees is 
 equally applicable to the Church to-day. The 
 Church must move out from where she is and 
 change her policies, else she will certainly go the 
 downward road to the sin against the Spirit and 
 die, leaving an infidel world as the result of her 
 division and unspiritual attitudes. I often wonder 
 why my brothers of the Roman Catholic Church 
 cling so tenaciously to the decrees of ancient coun- 
 cils and my brothers of Protestant Churches to 
 the Scriptural interpretations of long dead leaders, 
 as though infallibility rested upon ancient' councils 
 and upon the interpretation of the Scriptures of 
 long years ago. That the councils were made up 
 of good men or that the Scriptural interpretations 
 were made by those of piety and scholarship I 
 do not doubt, but they were in the yesterday. We 
 are living in to-day with preparation for to-mor- 
 row. What astronomers linger by the conclu- 
 sions of Hipparchus or the details of the conclu- 
 sions of Copernicus? Or what school of medi- 
 cine is governed by the opinions of Hippocrates 
 or Paracelsus ? Has it not been truly said, “ The 
 sons of this world are for their own generation 
 wiser than the sons of light ” ? The failure of 
 the Church has been her backward look — her his- 
 tory and her prejudice — necessarily weakening 
 her willingness to follow the leadership of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 The whole world is moving to-day as never 
 
88 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT I 
 
 before in all history. Every day is crowded with 
 the marvelous. Man is hungering for the satis- 
 faction of the prophetic element in himself as 
 never before. For the Church to refuse the 
 leadership of the Spirit until conscience dies is 
 the sin against the Spirit. Conscience may be 
 trained in the wrong school, but it may be un- 
 taught and trained in the right school ; it may be 
 defiled, but it can be made holy; it may be 
 wounded, but its wounds can be healed ; it may be 
 an evil conscience, but there is a way to make it 
 good; it may be a conscience whose works de- 
 serve death, but it can be cleansed; it may be 
 seared as with a hot iron, but it can be healed as 
 human flesh heals when it has been burnt — any 
 one of these conditions or all may come into a 
 single human life and there is a way open for 
 recovery. But when conscience is dead, so that 
 the Christian’s moral sense is gone with all its 
 loss of sense of guilt, that is such treason against 
 the Spirit as to make impossible a life here or 
 hereafter. An unwillingness to follow the 
 prophet’s lamp for one’s spiritual future is the 
 danger; the refusal is death. Penitence, faith, 
 hope, love and freedom are the paths of the 
 Spirit’s leading. 
 
 The principle of the Gospel of Jesus was trans- 
 ferring religion from the exterior to the interior. 
 The human heart was henceforth the temple. 
 The life of Jesus is the inspiration. The Spirit’s 
 function is to communicate to every disciple of 
 Jesus this religious consciousness — “ Christ in us 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 89 
 
 the hope of glory.” To say, “I am here, but 
 God is in heaven or at the altar ” is opposed to 
 the vital principles of the Gospel of Jesus. In- 
 stead it should be, “ I am here and by the rule 
 of His Spirit in me, God dwells in me as He 
 dwelt in Jesus when He walked among men.” 
 Is this audacity? I think not, for truth never is 
 audacious, but falsehood always is. It is by fol- 
 lowing the way of falsehood that we violate the 
 consciousness of God in us, arresting all motion 
 and change, thereby approaching the sin against 
 the Spirit. In our outlook there are unmistak- 
 able indications of a distinct awakening of the 
 consciousness of the religion of the Spirit and 
 this gives colour to our outlook on the future. 
 Organized Christianity must either give way to 
 this awakened consciousness, or decay in its 
 possessing the form of religion, but denying its 
 power, for the religion of Christ is destined to 
 come to fulfilment because it is life — the life of 
 God in men. 
 
 ' HI. Unity must be based upon truth, else it 
 • will be neither permanent nor spiritual. In the 
 maze of conflicting opinions the air is filled with 
 •echoes of Pilate’s interrogation, “What is truth?” 
 In the attempt to find the answer men have re- 
 sorted to definitions of truth, but the many op- 
 posing definitions of the same thing indicate 
 either the unpreparedness of the human mind to 
 make dogmatic definitions in this period regard- 
 ing unsettled problems, or the unwisdom of that 
 method in its approach toward truth, for the 
 
90 IF NOT A UMTED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 scholarship and piety of those who have prepared 
 these opposing definitions are above reproach. 
 Consequently we are now dealing with the unpre- 
 paredness of conclusions regarding truth, espe- 
 cially when those conclusions involve withdraw- 
 ing fellowship from those who dissent, and we 
 are likewise dealing with the unwisdom of these 
 methods in approaching truth. The maze in 
 which the whole Church is involved with its 
 multiplicity of divisions proves this. In the out- 
 look we need to counsel our own hearts to avoid 
 haste, as says the Hebrew prophet, 
 
 “ Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I lay in Zion 
 for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cor- 
 ner-stone of sure foundation : he that believeth shall not 
 be in haste.” ‘ 
 
 Is it not true that human impatience has been a 
 large factor in our divisions? As Canon B. H. 
 Streeter in his “ Restatement and Reunion ” says, 
 “ To be in a hurry for truth is the worse way 
 to get to your goal. But this lesson is hard to be 
 learned; man is by nature impatient, especially 
 when vital issues are at stake; and, while the 
 search for truth is going slowly on, there is no 
 truce in the battle with sin, within us or with- 
 out.” 
 
 The restatement of conclusions is of pre- 
 eminent importance. Indeed the most ancient 
 of the creeds— the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene 
 Creed — are repeated with reservation in many in- 
 
 ’ Isa. 28 : 16, 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 91 
 
 stances by those who are most loyal to the tradi- 
 tions of history. Yet there is a hesitancy to ap- 
 proach the threshold of either of these creeds 
 with the thought of revising their texts and ad- 
 justing them to new interpretations. The Holy 
 Scriptures have been revised from time to time 
 and their revised texts have undergone many new 
 interpretations. Whereas it would be generally 
 acknowledged that the significance of these two 
 most ancient creeds is not to us of this day what 
 it was to those of the fourth century when they 
 were framed. How much more must the same 
 principles apply to the revision and new interpre- 
 tations of all creeds, which are less in importance 
 than these ancient and venerable documents of 
 the early Church ! 
 
 Christianity was founded upon neither theology 
 nor philosophy, but upon the fact of Christ. 
 These have contributed to Christianity and will 
 always be handmaids to Christianity, but they be- 
 long to the few, while Christianity belongs to the 
 many. It must be frankly admitted that some- 
 times they have been hindrances instead of helps, 
 but this has been their abuse rather than their 
 rightful service. Christianity is beyond these as 
 the planetary paths are beyond the interpretations 
 of Galileo and Kepler. Before the Roman gov- 
 ernor asked the question, “ What is truth ? ” 
 Jesus had said, “ I am the truth.” It is the man 
 Jesus Christ with Whom we are having personal 
 transactions, if we are having any transactions 
 at all with the Eternal. Our relationship with 
 
92 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT f 
 
 Him is based upon the corresponding fact of the 
 new birth in ourselves. I recognize the diversity 
 of interpretations regarding the new birth, but I 
 do not pause here to be entangled in any of these 
 interpretations, other than to say it is putting on 
 the new nature, which is none other than the 
 nature of Christ, giving Himself to do the will 
 of God in His attitude both toward God, His 
 Father, and toward all men, His brothers. It 
 must be recognized that many in the various divi- 
 sions of Christendom have attained to the new 
 birth, irrespective of any one interpretation of 
 the new birth, if we are to consider at all the 
 evidences of a living faith. It is the fact of the 
 new birth, however, that holds the center of hu- 
 man experience. This fact is beyond all the- 
 ology, all philosophy, all forms, all ecclesiastical 
 organizations, manifesting itself in what the 
 Apostle Paul calls “ the fruit of the Spirit,” 
 which is the most costly product in human life. 
 He says, 
 
 “ The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffer- 
 ing, kindness, goodness, faiuifulness, meekness, self- 
 control ; against such there is no law.” * 
 
 Frequently these vital elements are pushed 
 aside — sad to say more frequently than other- 
 wise — ^to discuss systems of theology or to be 
 more definite to discuss Baptism, the Priesthood 
 and the Lord’s Supper, over which bitter contro- 
 versies have been waged. Great divisions now 
 
 ’ Gal. 5 : 22, 23. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 93 
 
 stand as the result of these controversies. We 
 are not only to abandon the controversies, but we 
 are to abolish the divisions. However, in the 
 midst of these conditions many in the various 
 divisions have gone on steadily producing “ the 
 fruit of the Spirit,” proving by that evidence, 
 which is stronger than logic, that those matters 
 which have been the occasion of severe contro- 
 versies and causes of divisions belong in the 
 realm of formal Christianity, where the largest 
 freedom is to be given. We have approached 
 Christ usually through Baptism, the Priesthood 
 and the Lord’s Supper — all of these or one or 
 more of these. That is to say, membership in 
 any one of the various divisions is usually asso- 
 ciated with all of these or some one of these; 
 hence we hear throughout Christendom and in 
 every language on the globe that old cry, “ Ex- 
 cept ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses, 
 ye cannot be saved”; or to be more explicit, 
 ” Unless you come to Christ by our way, your 
 salvation will be jeopardized.” 
 
 Does the outlook make it possible to reverse 
 the order ? I mean having received Jesus Christ 
 as our Lord and Saviour we should recognize as 
 Christians without reservation the Greek Ortho- 
 dox, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican and the 
 Protestant and approach Baptism, the Priesthood 
 and the Lord’s Supper corporately from within 
 the Church and under the leadership of the Holy 
 Spirit, by Whom Jesus promises to guide us to 
 the truth, when He says. 
 
94 IP NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 “ He (the Spirit) shall guide you into all the truth.” ‘ 
 
 To be met at the threshold with the statement 
 that some of these have not been baptized, or 
 some of these have no priesthood, or some of 
 these can have no Table of the Lord because 
 they have no priesthood, is simply begging the 
 question. These are the very things that have 
 not been decided. The truth about these things 
 is somewhere. We have tried to find that truth 
 working separately from our dogmatic viewpoints 
 and we are still divided. Why not try it by work- 
 ing together in humility and prayer ? Have 
 we got that far in Christian experience to face 
 these problems without prejudice and contro- 
 versy? That they are in the plan of Christi- 
 anity is generally accepted. The question is, 
 What are their places? 
 
 Baptism is a venerable institution, made doubly 
 sacred by Jesus Himself being baptized. But is 
 trine immersion or single immersion apostolic 
 baptism? Is baptism of the penitent believer by 
 immersion in the name of the Father and of the 
 Son and of the Holy Spirit the only Scriptural 
 baptism, or is pouring or sprinkling of water on 
 a penitent believer in the name of the Father and 
 of the Son and of the Holy Spirit equally as 
 Scriptural? Is the baptism of infants accord- 
 ing to apostolic precedent or is it post-apostolic in 
 origin? Has baptism a regenerating element or 
 has it anything at all to do with salvation? 
 
 *John i6: 13. 
 
CHEISTIAK UNITY ; ITS OUTLOOK 95 
 
 Humanity will always need the priesthood. 
 But is there a priesthood of all believers or is 
 there a special priesthood set apart for sacerdotal 
 service? Is there a Christian priesthood after 
 the model of the Levitical priesthood of the Old 
 Testament with its severe restrictions, or can 
 Christians other than priests administer the sacra- 
 ments ? Is the sacerdotal priesthood apostolic or 
 post-apostolic ? 
 
 The Ijord’s Supper has ever around it the at- 
 mosphere of the Upper Room. But does the bread 
 and wine contain “ truly, really and substantially 
 the body and blood, together with the soul and 
 divinity of our Lord ” or does “ the bread and 
 wine become by consecration really and sacra- 
 mentally the body and blood of our Lord ” or is 
 it a spiritual memorial of the broken body and 
 shed blood of Jesus Christ? In its observance 
 have all Christians a right to it or only those who 
 are members of particular denominations? Is it 
 to be observed weekly, monthly or at other regu- 
 lar or irregular intervals? 
 
 And still another question, Is the primitive con- 
 stitution of the Church to continue without 
 change, or is it to be reconstituted in order to 
 preserve its vitality in its ministry to men? 
 
 There are millions of Christians on each side* 
 of all these questions. Other millions occupy • 
 either middle ground or ground which has not • 
 been covered by any of these questions. 
 
 There are two methods in finding the solution f 
 regarding these matters: One is to separate into > 
 
96 IFFOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT! 
 
 • a party all those who agree to a certain interpre- 
 , tation and remain proudly aloof from all others, 
 .which is the present condition of the Church and 
 . is the best possible way to perpetuate division and 
 •therefore the best method not to find the real 
 « solution ; the other is to come together in a f ellow- 
 « ship based upon the fact of the Messiahship and 
 
 • Lordship of Jesus and to prayerfully and humbly 
 .work and study corporately, which is the one 
 
 • hopeful method of finding the solution. Conse- 
 quently it is of primary importance to note that 
 all denominationalism — Greek Orthodox, Roman 
 Catholic, Anglican and all Protestants — is based 
 upon half-statements. The tragedy of this is in- 
 tensified by the acceptance of these half-state- 
 ments for the whole, producing a condition which 
 either expels those from its fold who will not 
 accept the half-statements, or themselves with- 
 draw. We must abandon the position that a 
 thing is settled because a group of a million or a 
 hundred million, for that matter, of devout and 
 scholarly Christians support it, when at the same 
 time we know that there are another million or 
 perhaps a hundred million equally as devout and 
 scholarly dissenting from our interpretation. To 
 withdraw or to be withdrawn from does not settle 
 problems of this character, but instead establishes 
 unscientific and unspiritual methods of procedure. 
 Consequently, however much some of us may dis- 
 like to acknowledge it, the fact is that Baptism, 
 the Priesthood and the Lord’s Supper cannot be 
 classified at this period in any other than that of 
 
CHEISTIAlf UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 97 
 
 the unsettled problems. Hence for our dog- 
 matism, pride and isolation we must substitute 
 freedom, humility and fellowship if we are to 
 know the will of God for our generation. Until 
 the settlement of these questions there should be 
 cooperation, federation and such cooperative work 
 as will make it possible to help toward a solution. 
 
 In our outlook for more satisfactory conclu- 
 sions we must seek corporately for the truth, re- 
 discovering for ourselves our liberties and our 
 fellowship with the saints of all ages, as well as 
 the discovery of new paths, under the lamp of 
 the Spirit of God and in the light of all new 
 knowledge. One wearies in this present day 
 maze of confusion, longing for altitudes from 
 which he may see more clearly the approaches to 
 truth. Many Christians in looking upon Chris- 
 tians in other communions are like a man travel- 
 ing in foggy weather. Those at a distance on 
 every side appear to be wrapped in the fog, while 
 near him the atmosphere appears clear, although 
 he is as much in the fog as any that he sees 
 around him. The most difficult task in our ap- 
 proach to truth is the discovery of our own errors, 
 for truth is not apart from personal life — a fact 
 that needs to be written in letters of gold. This 
 is the force of Christ’s statement when He says, 
 “ I am the truth.” The ideal of Christian life is 
 itself becoming the truth, referred to by the 
 Apostle Paul in these words, “ For me to live is 
 Christ,” that is to say, for me to live is to repro- 
 duce Christ. Transcendent heights! Yet not 
 
98 IP NOT A UNITED CHURCH— WHAT f 
 
 beyond the possibilities of the weakest and 
 humblest of us all. Truth is only expressed and 
 revealed as we develop spiritually. Consequently 
 truth is in the realm of the spiritual and it can 
 only be discovered by the spiritual eye. 
 
 The adjustment of all spiritual problems lies 
 in the future and whatever truth they contain will 
 be discovered only under the guidance of the 
 Spirit, but to assume a dogmatic position on an 
 unsettled problem, to pose in superiority over 
 other Christians and to practice aloofness with 
 other Christians, is the one sure way not to find 
 the truth. Such a spirit is so unspiritual that 
 whatever of truth it may possess becomes 
 poisoned by the attitude of untruth. To say that 
 the privileges of the Church and the fellowship of 
 Jesus are for me and not for you so closely ap- 
 proaches infidelity that for my part I had rather 
 deny that Jesus is the Christ than to believe that 
 He is the Christ for my party, but not in the 
 same sense for the other parties of Christendom. 
 Under the poison of a sectarian policy it is no 
 surprise that a divided Church faces an infidel 
 world. 
 
 However, there are millions of believers 
 scattered among all communions and our outlook 
 has in it the promise of a love that “ suffereth 
 long and is kind,” that “ envieth not,” that 
 ” vaunteth not itself,” that “is not puffed up,” 
 that “ doth not behave itself unseemly,” that 
 “ seeketh not its own,” that “ is not provoked,” 
 that “ taketh not account of evil,” and that “ re- 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY ; ITS OUTLOOK 99 
 
 joiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
 the truth.” Rapid changes toward unity must 
 crowd the future, else increasing tragedies, wider 
 in scope and more brutal in character, will pre- 
 dominate on the earth. In the fulfilment of 
 God’s promises all Christians must feel the divine 
 impulse, from the pope in the Vatican to the 
 deacon in the North Carolina mountain Church of 
 Primitive Baptists. Some Gregory will come to 
 the papacy, some Hooker or Andrewes will come 
 to the Anglicans and some new voices like Calix- 
 tus or Baxter or Campbell will be heard among 
 Protestants. Conferences will succeed contro- 
 versies, prayer will succeed dogma and there will 
 be multitudes of ventures toward unity in search 
 for the paths of truth, which is only another way 
 of saying that many will trust God’s leadership 
 more and man’s decrees and anathemas less. 
 There must be ventures of faith in the living God 
 regarding the unity of His Church, as distinct as 
 the Apostle Paul’s experiences in his break with 
 conservative Judaism and going out beyond where 
 others hesitated to go. It was the way of liv- 
 ing truth then and it is no less the way of the 
 same living truth now. As says Dr. James 
 Cooper of the Church of Scotland, 
 
 “ Peace must come through the truth — the truth as it 
 is in Jesus, stated, apprehended, grasped with intense 
 realization of the duties it imposes.” 
 
 Facing the facts of the divided Church with its 
 serious complications along with the urgent need 
 
100 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT ? 
 
 of interchurch fellowship, as well as approaching 
 the sin against the Holy Spirit and likewise stand- 
 ing in the daybreak of the prophetic dawn of new 
 discoveries of truth, we must be concerned be- 
 cause it is the concern of Christ. These things 
 cannot be pushed easily aside and every man 
 continue to go his own way without jeopardizing 
 the faith of the Church and the honour of Christ. 
 * There remains to be said that there are seven 
 , things which every Christian can do and ought 
 . to do to brighten the outlook for Christian unity 
 and hasten its consummation. These are : 
 
 ( 1 ) Praying, earnest praying in public and in 
 private, remembering that in the high-priestly 
 prayer of Jesus He says, 
 
 “ Holy Father ... I pray . . . that they may 
 all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in 
 Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world 
 may believe that Thou didst send Me.” ^ 
 
 (2) Thinking, definite thinking in the terms 
 of ttrotherhood of all Christians, remembering 
 Jesus says, 
 
 “ One is your Teacher, and all ye are brethren.” ’ 
 
 (3) Speaking, kindly speaking of those 
 Christians in other communions than your own 
 with a real interest in their welfare, remembering 
 that the Apostle Paul says, 
 
 “ Not looking each of you to his own things, but each 
 of you also to the things of others.” ’ 
 
 ^ John 17:21. ® Matt. 23:8. ® Phil. 2:4. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 101 
 
 (4) Conferring, frankly conferring with 
 those of other communions whenever it is pos- 
 sible, always in tlie spirit of courteous friendship, 
 and avoiding the dangers attending controversial 
 methods, which belong under the admonition of 
 the Apostle Paul, when he says, 
 
 “ Shun foolish questionings, and genealogies, and 
 strifes, and fightings about the law; for they are un- 
 profitable and vain. A factious man after a first and 
 second admonition refuse; knowing that such a one is 
 perverted, and sinneth, being self-condemned.”^ 
 
 (5) Teaching, patiently teaching the prin- 
 ciples of Christian brotherhood and the unity of 
 the Church in circles, in classes, in schools and 
 wherever there is the opportunity, by text-books, 
 lectures, literature, conferences, etc., with ear- 
 nestness and intelligence, so that there may be a 
 free intercommunication of the ideas of Christian 
 unity the world over, destroying the menace of 
 ignorance and of denominational prejudice, pro- 
 ducing correct ideas of brotherhood among all 
 Christians and increasing popular understanding 
 of these principles that make for peace in the 
 House of Christ, remembering that He says, 
 
 “ The Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My 
 name. He shall teach you all things, and bring to your 
 remembrance all that I said unto you.”’ 
 
 (6) Working, heartily working together, espe- 
 cially those communions of nearest kinship, enter- 
 ing into definite negotiations looking toward their 
 
 ‘Titus 3:9-11. ’John 14:26. 
 
102 IFNOT A UNITED CHURCH— WHAT! 
 
 formal rapprochement and ultimate union, re- 
 membering that the Apostle Paul says, 
 
 “ We are God’s fellow-workers: ye (the whole divided 
 Corinthian Church) are God’s husbandry, God’s build- 
 ing.” * 
 
 ( 7 ) Believing, sincerely believing that the 
 prayer and purpose of Jesus will find their fulfil- 
 ment in a united Christendom and indeed they are 
 being fulfilled now, remembering that Jesus says, 
 
 “All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe 
 that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” * 
 
 This path is not an untrodden highway. There 
 are many in the various communions walking it 
 and each additional brother who enrolls himself 
 in the quest for the unity of the Church of God 
 brightens the outlook and brings us nearer to the 
 consummation of the prayer and purpose of Jesus 
 Christ in His ministry among men. 
 
 Every Christian must examine his own heart 
 and face the task with the joy of the new con- 
 sciousness of brotherhood. Unity must be found 
 first. Its basis must be religious rather than 
 theological. Plans of cooperation and systems 
 of theology will follow. The Church is the Body 
 of Christ and all Christians are brothers. Says 
 the Rev. T. A. Lacey in his “ Unity and Schism,” 
 
 “ It is because they are brothers that heresy and 
 schism are sins. We are, in point of fact, one divided 
 family, and the first step toward reconciliation is the 
 acknowledgment of brotherhood. That means repent- 
 
 ’I Cor. 3:9. “Mark 11:24. 
 
CHEISTIAN UNITY : ITS OUTLOOK 103 
 
 ence. We need not look curiously into the origins of 
 schism; that is the way to self-exculpation. We are 
 not called to the easy and pleasant but unprofitable task 
 of lamenting the sins of our fathers, and building the 
 tombs of the prophets whom they slew. We are called 
 to repent of our own sins; not of one another’s sins, 
 but of our own ; the sins by which we have perpetuated 
 discord. And repentance means renunciation. We are 
 not to cast away things tried and proved, in a vain hope 
 of mutual accommodation ; but there are sacrifices to be 
 made before those things are approached. A sacrifice 
 should be the giving of something that we value, some- 
 thing of cost. And it must be offered, not in hope of 
 gain — for then it is no sacrifice — but as an act of love. 
 We must listen to the cry, albeit raised by discordant 
 voices, ‘ Sirs, ye are brethren ! ’ ” 
 
 The fact of brotherhood must become as per- 
 manently established in human thought as the fact 
 of Christ. As upon the two great command- 
 ments rest the law and the prophets, likewise 
 upon these two great facts rests the salvation of 
 the world. The future is rich with the promises 
 of God and the spiritual possibilities of mankind. 
 An infidel world is the price we are paying for a 
 divided Church. The time is at hand when the 
 honour of Christ and the salvation of a world 
 must rise above our pride of party and content- 
 ment of divisions in obedience to the will of God 
 on earth. Sectarianism must be abolished. 
 Henceforth let no man glory in his denomination ; * 
 that is sectarianism : but let all men glory in * 
 Christ and practice brotherhood with men ; that * 
 is Christianity. • 
 
Appendix 
 
 I 
 
 THE CALL FOR A WORLD CONFERENCE ON 
 
 FAITH AND ORDER BY THE PROTESTANT 
 EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 
 At the General Convention of 1910 of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church in the United States of America, held 
 in Cincinnati, the following report was presented to the 
 House of Clerical and Lay Deputies on October 19, 1910 ; 
 
 The Joint Committee to which was referred the fol- 
 lowing resolution offered in the House of Deputies by 
 the Rev. W. T. Manning, D. D., of New York: 
 
 Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that a 
 joint committee, consisting of seven bishops, seven 
 presbyters and seven laymen, be appointed to take under 
 advisement the promotion by this Church of a confer- 
 ence following the general method of the World Mis- 
 sionary Conference, to be participated in by representa- 
 tives of all Christian bodies throughout the world which 
 accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, for 
 the consideration of questions pertaining to the Faith 
 and Order of the Church of Christ, and that said com- 
 mittee, if it deem such a conference feasible, shall report 
 to this Convention ; 
 
 have considered the same, and submit the following re- 
 port, and recommend the immediate consideration and 
 passage of the resolution appended to the report. 
 
 104 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 106 
 
 “Your committee is of one mind. We believe that 
 the time has now arrived when representatives of the 
 whole family of Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, may be 
 willing to come together for the consideration of ques- 
 tions of Faith and Order. We believe, further, that all 
 Christian communions are in accord with us in our 
 desire to lay aside self-will, and to put on the mind 
 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We would heed this 
 call of the Spirit of God in all lowliness, and with 
 singleness of purpose. We would place ourselves by 
 the side of our fellow Christians, looking not only on 
 our own things, but also on the things of others, con- 
 vinced that our one hope of mutual understanding is in 
 taking personal counsel together in the spirit of love and 
 forbearance. It is our conviction that such a confer- 
 ence for the purpose of study and discussion, without 
 power to legislate or to adopt resolutions, is the next 
 step toward unity. 
 
 “ With grief for our aloofness in the past, and for 
 other faults of pride and self-sufficiency, which make 
 for schism; with loyalty to the truth as we see it, and 
 with respect for the convictions of those who differ 
 from us ; holding the belief that the beginnings of unity 
 are to be found in the clear statement and full con- 
 sideration of those things in which we differ, as well as 
 of those things in which we are at one, we respectfully 
 submit the following resolution; 
 
 " Whereas, there is to-day among all Christian people 
 a growing desire for the fulfilment of Our Lord’s 
 prayer that all His disciples may be one; that the world 
 may believe that God has sent Him : 
 
 “Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that a 
 joint commission be appointed to bring about a confer- 
 ence for the consideration of questions touching Faith 
 and Order, and that all Christian communions through- 
 out the world which confess our Lord Jesus Christ as 
 God and Saviour be asked to unite with us in arranging 
 for and conducting such a conference. The Commission 
 shall consist of seven bishops, appointed by the chairman 
 of the House of Bishops, and seven presbyters and 
 
106 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 seven laymen, appointed by 
 of Deputies, and shall have 
 and to fill any vacancies 
 General Convention; 
 
 GEORGE W. PETERKIN 
 BOYD VINCENT 
 THOMAS F. GAIEOR 
 WIEEIAM EAWRENCE 
 CHAREES P. ANDERSON 
 REGINALD H. WELLER 
 CHARLES H. BRENT 
 WILLIAM T. MANNING 
 ALEXANDER MANN . 
 BEVERLY E. WARNER 
 JOHN E. SULGER 
 
 the president of the House 
 power to add to its number 
 occurring before the next 
 
 CHARLES N. LATHROP 
 WILLIAM M. CLARK 
 B. TALBOT ROGERS 
 ROBERT H. GARDINER 
 GEORGE WHARTON PEPPER 
 BURTON MANSFIELD 
 EDWARD P. bailey 
 FRANCIS L. STETSON 
 H. D. W. ENGLISH 
 W. A. ROBINSON 
 
 Joint Committee.” 
 
 On October 19, 1910, the above resolution was adopted 
 unanimously by both the House of Bishops and the 
 House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, and the Joint 
 Commission appointed. 
 
 The officers of the Commission are: 
 
 President 
 
 Rt. Rev. Charles P. Anderson, D. D., Bishop of 
 Chicago, 1612 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. 
 
 Chairman of Executive Committee 
 Rev. William T. Manning, D. D., 
 
 27 West 2Sth Street, New York, N. Y. 
 
 T reasurer 
 
 George ZabriskiE, D. C. L., 
 
 49 Wall Street, New York, N. Y. 
 
 Secretary 
 
 Robert H. Gardiner, 
 
 174 Water Street, Gardiner, Maine. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 107 
 
 II 
 
 ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY, INC. 
 
 Growing out of a wide-spread desire for Christian 
 unity, the Disciples of Christ at their General Conven- 
 tion at Topeka, Kansas, in October, 1910, revived the 
 “ Christian Association,” which was an organization 
 started in 1809 by Thomas Campbell, a Presbyterian 
 minister, and later developed into what is now the 
 communion known as “ Disciples of Christ.” The new 
 organization, which was started on the same day that 
 the Protestant Episcopalians appointed in their General 
 Convention, October 19, 1910, in Cincinnati, Ohio, 
 their Commission on a World Conference on Faith and 
 Order, took the name “Association for the Promotion 
 of Christian Unity,” with headquarters in Baltimore, 
 Maryland. 
 
 The Association recognizes all Christians as members 
 of the Body of Christ — Greek Orthodox, Roman 
 Catholic, Anglican, Protestants and all others who 
 accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. 
 
 Its purpose is to watch for every indication of 
 Christian unity and hasten the time by (i) intercessory 
 prayer, not only on the part of its members, but by 
 organizing leagues of prayer; (2) friendly conferences, 
 and it has held many very satisfactory conferences with 
 the leaders of various communions in America and in 
 Europe; and (3) distribution of irenic literature, and it 
 has distributed hundreds of thousands of pages of 
 Christian unity literature, written by leaders in the 
 various communions of Christendom. The Association 
 aims to be a depository for all kinds of Christian unity 
 literature. 
 
 There are four commissions in the Association ; 
 Commission on Christian Unity, dealing with Christian 
 unity in general; Commission on a World Conference 
 on Faith and Order; Commission on Federation; and 
 Commission on International Friendship. To all these 
 
108 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 subjects the Association for the Promotion of Christian 
 Unity has spoken. 
 
 Condition of memberhsip in the Association is sym- 
 pathy with the work of Christian unity, expressed in 
 prayer and cooperation, and the payment of an annual 
 membership fee of not less than $2.50. 
 
 Peter Ainseie, President. 
 
 H. C. Armstrong, Secretary, 
 
 Seminary House, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE SECOND INTERIM REPORT OF THE 
 BRITISH COMMITTEE 
 
 Second Interim Report of a sub-committee appointed by 
 the Archbishops of Canterbury and York’s com- 
 mittee and by representatives of the English Free 
 Church’s commissions, in connection with the pro- 
 posed World Conference on Faith and Order. 
 
 A MOVEMENT has been initiated in America by the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, which has been widely 
 taken up by the Christian Churches in the United 
 States, to prepare for a world-wide conference on Faith 
 and Order with the view of promoting the visible unity 
 of the Body of Christ on earth. In response to an 
 appeal from those who are cooperating in America a 
 committee was appointed by the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury and York and commissions by the Free Churches 
 to promote the same movement in England. 
 
 This joint conference has already issued a First 
 Interim Report prepared by a joint sub-committee, con- 
 sisting of:— (i) A statement of agreement on matters 
 of Faith; (2) A statement of agreement on matters 
 relating to Order; (3) A statement of differences in 
 relation to matters of Order which require further study 
 and discussion. 
 
 In further pursuit of the main purpose the sub-com- 
 mittee was reappointed and enlarged. After mature 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 109 
 
 and prolonged consideration it is hereby issuing its 
 Second Interim Report under the direction of the con- 
 ference as a whole, but on the understanding that the 
 members of the sub-committee alone are to be held re- 
 sponsible for the substance of the document. 
 
 * * * 
 
 In issuing our Second Interim Report we desire to 
 prevent possible misconceptions regarding our inten- 
 tions. We are engaged, not in formulating any basis 
 of reunion for Christendom, but in preparing for the 
 consideration of such a basis at the projected Confer- 
 ence on Faith and Order. We are exploring the ground 
 in order to discover the ways of approach to the ques- 
 tions to be considered that seem most promising and 
 hopeful. In our first report we were not attempting 
 to draw up a creed for subscription, but desired to 
 affirm our agreement upon certain foundation truths as 
 the basis of a spiritual and rational creed and life for 
 all mankind in Christ Jesus the Lord. It was a matter 
 of profound gratitude to God that we found ourselves 
 so far in agreement. No less grateful were we that even 
 as regards matters relating to Order we were able to 
 hold certain common convictions, though in regard to 
 these we were forced to recognize differences of inter- 
 pretation. We felt deeply, however, that we could not 
 let the matter rest there; but that we must in confer- 
 ence seek to understand one another better, in order to 
 discover if even on the questions on which we seemed to 
 differ most we might not come nearer to one another. 
 
 I. In all our discussions we were guided by two con- 
 victions from which we could not escape, and would 
 not, even if we could. 
 
 It is the purpose of our Lord that believers in Him 
 should be one visible society, and this unity is essential 
 to the purpose of Christ for His Church and for its 
 effective witness and work in the world. The conflict 
 among Christian nations has brought home to us with a 
 greater poignancy the disastrous results of the divi- 
 sions which prevail among Christians, inasmuch as they 
 have hindered that growth of mutual understanding 
 
110 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 which it should be the function of the Church to foster, 
 and because a Church which is itself divided cannot 
 speak effectively to a divided world. 
 
 The visible unity of believers which answers to our 
 Lord’s purpose must have its source and sanction, not 
 in any human arrangements, but in the will of the One 
 Father, manifested in the Son, and effected through 
 the operation of the Spirit; and it must express and 
 maintain the fellowship of His people with one another 
 in Him. Thus the visible unity of the Body of Christ 
 is not adequately expressed in the cooperation of the 
 Christian Churches for moral influence and social serv- 
 ice, though such cooperation might with great advantage 
 be carried much further than it is at present; it could 
 only be fully realized through community of worship, 
 faith and order, including common participation in the 
 Lord’s Supper. This would be quite compatible with 
 a rich diversity in life and worship. 
 
 2. In suggesting the conditions under which this vis- 
 ible unity might be realized we desire to set aside for 
 the present the abstract discussion of the origin of the 
 episcopate historically, or its authority doctrinally; and 
 to secure for that discussion when it comes, as it must 
 come, at the Conference, an atmosphere congenial not 
 to controversy, but to agreement. This can be done 
 only by facing the actual situation in order to discover 
 if any practical proposals could be made that would 
 bring the episcopal and non-episcopal communions 
 nearer to one another. Further, the proposals are 
 offered not as a basis for immediate action, but for 
 the sympathetic and generous consideration of all the 
 Churches. 
 
 The first fact which we agree to acknowledge is that 
 the position of episcopacy in the greater part of Chris- 
 tendom as the recognized organ of the unity and con- 
 tinuity of the Church is such that the members of the 
 episcopal Churches ought not to be expected to abandon 
 it in assenting to any basis of reunion. 
 
 The second fact which we agree to acknowledge is 
 that there are a number of Christian Churches not 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 111 
 
 accepting the episcopal order which have been used by 
 the Holy Spirit in His work of enlightening the world, 
 converting sinners, and perfecting saints. They came 
 into being, through reaction from grave abuses in the 
 Church at the time of their origin, and were led in re- 
 sponse to fresh apprehensions of divine truth to give 
 expression to certain types of Christian experience, 
 aspiration and fellowship, and to secure rights of the 
 Christian people which had been neglected or denied. 
 In view of these two facts, if the visible unity so much 
 desired within the Church and so necessary for the testi- 
 mony and influence of the Church in the world is ever to 
 be realized, it is imperative that the episcopal and non- 
 episcopal communions shall approach one another not 
 by the method of human compromise, but in correspond- 
 ence with God’s own way of reconciling differences in 
 Christ Jesus. What we desire to see is not grudging 
 concession, but a willing acceptance for the common en- 
 richment of the united Church of the wealth distinctive 
 of each. 
 
 Looking as frankly and as widely as possible at the 
 whole situation, we desire with a due sense of respon- 
 sibility to submit for the serious consideration of all the 
 parts of a divided Christendom what seem to us the 
 necessary conditions of any possibility of reunion : 
 
 1. That continuity with the historic episcopate should 
 be effectively preserved. 
 
 2. That in order that the rights and responsibilities 
 of the whole Christian community in the government of 
 the Church may be adequately recognized, the episco- 
 pate should reassume a constitutional form, both as 
 regards the method of the election of the bishop as by 
 clergy and people, and the method of government after 
 election. It is perhaps necessary that we should call to 
 mind that such was the primitive ideal and practise of 
 episcopacy and it so remains in many episcopal com- 
 munions to-day. 
 
 3. That acceptance of the fact of episcopacy and 
 not any theory as to its character should be all that is 
 asked for. We think that this may be the more easily 
 
112 IFNOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT 1 
 
 taken for granted as the acceptance of any such theory 
 is not now required of ministers of the Church of Eng- 
 land. It would no doubt be necessary before any ar- 
 rangement for corporate reunion could be made to dis- 
 cuss the exact functions which it may be agreed to 
 recognize as belonging to the episcopate, but we think 
 this can be left to the future. 
 
 The acceptance of episcopacy on these terms should 
 not involve any Christian community in the necessity of 
 disowning its past, but should enable all to maintain 
 the continuity of their witness and influence as heirs and 
 trustees of types of Christian thought, life and order, 
 not only of value to themselves but of value to the 
 Church as a whole. Accordingly we hope and desire 
 that each of these communions would bring its own 
 distinctive contribution, not only to the common life of 
 the Church, but also to its methods of organization, and 
 that all that is true in the experience and testimony of 
 the uniting communions would be conserved to the 
 Church. Within such a recovered unity we should 
 agree in claiming that the legitimate freedom of pro- 
 phetic ministry should be carefully preserved; and in 
 anticipating that many customs and institutions which 
 have been developed in separate communities may be 
 preserved within the larger unity of which they have 
 come to form a part. 
 
 We have carefully avoided any discussion of the 
 merits of any polity, or any advocacy of one form in 
 preference to another. All we have attempted is to 
 show how reunion might be brought about, the con- 
 ditions of the existing Churches and the convictions 
 held regarding these questions by their members being 
 what they are. As we are persuaded that it is on these 
 lines and these alone that the subject can be approached 
 with any prospect of any measure of agreement, we do 
 earnestly ask the members of the Churches to which we 
 belong to examine carefully our conclusions and the 
 facts on which they are based, and to give them all 
 the weight that they deserve. 
 
 In putting forward these proposals we do so because 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 113 
 
 it must be felt by all good-hearted Christians as an in- 
 tolerable burden to find themselves permanently sep- 
 arated in respect of religious worship and communion 
 from those in whose characters and lives they recognize 
 the surest evidences of the indwelling Spirit; and be- 
 cause, as becomes increasingly evident, it is only as a 
 body, praying, taking counsel, and acting together, that 
 the Church can hope to appeal to men as the Body of 
 Christ, that is Christ’s visible organ and instrument in 
 the world, in which the Spirit of brotherhood and of 
 love as wide as humanity finds effective expression. 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 G. W. Bath : & Wei,!, : 
 
 {Chairman). 
 
 E. Winton: 
 
 C. Oxon: 
 
 W. T. Davison. 
 
 A. E. Garvie. 
 
 H. ly. Goudge. 
 
 J. Scott Lidgett. 
 
 W. B. Seebie. 
 
 J. H. Shakespeare. 
 
 Eugene Stock. 
 
 WiEEiAM Temple. 
 
 Tissington Tatlow {Hon. Sec.). 
 
 H. G. Wood. 
 
 March, 1918. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE CALL FOR A CONFERENCE ON ORGANIC 
 UNION OF THE EVANGELICAL PROTES- 
 TANT BODIES IN AMERICA BY THE 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN 
 THE U. S. A. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., in common 
 with other evangelical communions, has felt an in- 
 creasing desire for a closer union of the Christian 
 bodies of America. This desire has been greatly 
 augmented since the outbreak of the world war which 
 is drawing our people together along all lines of their 
 
114 IF NOT A UNITED CHURCH— WHAT f 
 
 life, and was given definite expression by the action of 
 the 130th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
 in the U. S. A., at Columbus, Ohio, 1918, which recorded 
 the “profound conviction that the time has come for 
 organic union of the evangelical Churches of America,” 
 and provided “ that this Assembly hereby overtures the 
 national bodies of the evangelical communions of 
 America to meet with our representatives for the pur- 
 pose of formulating a plan of organic union.” 
 
 In taking this action the purpose of the Presbyterian 
 Church is simply to invite her brethren in Christ to 
 meet and counsel together with a view to finding a way 
 by which we may outwardly and concretely express that 
 spiritual union which we believe already exists among 
 the people of Christ. 
 
 Our Church is further moved to this step by her 
 sense of the new and heavy responsibilities now resting 
 on us all, and which must grow heavier in the new day 
 coming to the world as the result of the great war, re- 
 sponsibilities which we feel cannot be adequately met 
 in our separate capacities, but which we are persuaded 
 can be effectively carried by a union of existing forces. 
 Such a consummation would present to mankind a 
 united witness of our common faith and also equip and 
 perfect the Church for the maximum of service to her 
 Lord and the world for which He died. 
 
 Wm. H. Roberts, 
 Chairman Committee on Church 
 Cooperation and Union. 
 
 Witherspoon Building, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 A preliminary conference composed of the representa- 
 tives of seventeen churches met in Philadelphia and on 
 December 5, 1918, took the following action ; 
 
 1. That the members of this Conference from each 
 communion, whether present in official or personal 
 capacity, be asked as soon as possible to appoint repre- 
 sentatives on an ad interim committee to carry forward 
 the movement toward organic union here initiated. 
 
 2. The committee shall be composed of one member 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 116 
 
 from each communion, and one additional member for 
 each 500,000 communicants, or major fraction thereof. 
 In addition, the Foreign Missions Conference and the 
 Home Missions Council shall each be asked to name one 
 member. 
 
 3. The same privilege of membership on the com- 
 mittee shall be extended to evangelical denominations 
 not represented here. 
 
 4. The members of the committee appointed by the 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. are asked to act 
 as the nucleus and convener of the ad interim committee. 
 
 5. This ad interim committee shall be charged with 
 the following duties : 
 
 (a) To develop and use at its discretion, agencies 
 and methods for discovering and creating interest in 
 the subject of organic union throughout the Churches 
 of the country. 
 
 (b) To make provision for presenting by personal 
 delegations, or otherwise, to the national bodies of all 
 the evangelical communions of the United States, urgent 
 invitations to participate in an interdenominational 
 council on organic union. 
 
 (c) To lay before the bodies thus approached the 
 steps necessary for the holding of such council, in- 
 cluding the plan and basis of representation, and the 
 date of the Council which shall be as early as possible, 
 and in any event, not later than 1920. 
 
 (d) To prepare for presentation to such council when 
 it shall assemble a suggested plan or plans of organic 
 union. 
 
 (e) To consider and report upon any legal matters 
 related to the plan or plans of union which it may 
 propose. 
 
 6. In addition to the above, the ad interim committee 
 is directed to report to the interdenominational council 
 on any and all matters within the field of its inquiries. 
 The committee will be subject to the jurisdiction of the 
 Council. 
 
 In requesting the ad interim committee to undertake 
 the arduous task outlined, the conference desires the 
 
116 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT I 
 
 committee to proceed with freedom at every point. As 
 of possible assistance, however, in the deliberations, the 
 conference expresses its present judgment as to certain 
 aspects of the problem to be faced. 
 
 1. The conference is profoundly solicitous that the 
 effort for organic union shall have first regard to 
 those forces of vital spiritual life which alone give 
 meaning to our effort. No mechanical uniformity must 
 be sought, nor any form of organization which ignores 
 or thwarts the free movement of the Spirit of God, in 
 the hearts of His servants. 
 
 2. In line with this desire the conference hopes the 
 committee will be able to devise plans so broad and 
 flexible as to make place for all the evangelical 
 Churches of the land, whatever their outlook of tra- 
 dition, temperament or taste, whatever their relation- 
 ships racially or historically. 
 
 3. The conference regards with deep interest and 
 warm approbation all the movements of our time 
 toward closer cooperative relations between com- 
 munions, especially the notable service rendered by the 
 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 
 While the ad interim committee’s aim and function will 
 lie in a field entirely different from those movements, 
 it will be expected to maintain sympathetic relations 
 with them, and to regard with satisfaction any rein- 
 forcement which its activities may bring to them. 
 
 4. The notice of the committee is directed to the 
 efforts for organic union represented in other lands, 
 especially the Churches of Canada. The remarkable 
 and significant statement recently issued by a joint 
 committee of Anglican and Free Churches of Great 
 Britain will also call for the study of the committee. 
 
 5. The conference calls attention to the fact that in 
 its search for a plan of organic union, the committee 
 will not be precluded from considering plans of federal 
 union such as are in varying forms present to the minds 
 of members of this conference. Our nation is a federal 
 union, but is not the less an organic union. Care should 
 be used not to confuse the term “ federal ” as thus em- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 117 
 
 ployed, with this meaning when used to signify “as- 
 sociated ” or “ cooperative.” 
 
 6. Last of all, the conference declares its hope and 
 longing, that the evangelical Churches may give them- 
 selves with a new faith and ardour to the proclamation 
 of the gospel of Christ, which is the only hope of our 
 stricken world, and to all those ministries of Christian 
 love and leading for the community, the nation and the 
 nations, by which they shall reveal to men the mind of 
 Christ and hasten the coming of His kingdom. 
 
 Attest : — 
 
 Wm. H. Roberts, 
 Chairman Business Committee. 
 
 Hubert C. Herring, 
 Secretary Business Committee. 
 
 V 
 
 PROPOSED ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 
 
 MEMORANDUM 
 Presented by 
 
 The Most Rev. the Archbishop of Uppsala to the In- 
 ternational Committee of the World Alliance for 
 Promoting International Friendship through the 
 Churches at The Hague, October 2nd, 1919. 
 
 The need of witnessing to the unity of all true be- 
 lievers around the Cross of Christ was felt in many 
 quarters during the war. 
 
 A declaration was issued to this effect already in 
 November, 1914, by representatives of the Church in 
 neutral countries, i. e. by the Federal Council in the 
 U. S. A. and by representatives of the Church in 
 Denmark, Holland, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden; 
 further, by two bishops in belligerent countries, i. e. 
 by the Archbishop of Finland and by Bishop Ferenez, 
 Transylvania. Late in the summer of 1917 the bishops 
 of Seeland, Denmark and Christiania, Norway, and my- 
 self from Sweden, issued an invitation to an ecumenical 
 
118 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT! 
 
 conference. Our invitation was favourably received by 
 Christians and representative bodies in different 
 Churches and countries on both sides belonging to the 
 evangelical part of the Catholic Church and to the 
 orthodox part of the Catholic Church. As to the great 
 third part of that Church, the Roman part, sympathies 
 were expressed strongly by the Archbishop of Warsaw 
 in the name of the whole episcopate in Poland. Cardinal 
 Gasparri wrote on behalf of the pope. 
 
 Delegates were appointed by religious authorities in 
 Hungary, in Germany, in Great Britain, by the Holy 
 Synods in Constantinople and Athens, and churchmen 
 from other countries, e. g. America, expected to come. 
 However, as several difficulties, especially in obtaining 
 passports, made a really representative gathering from 
 both sides impossible, we held an international confer- 
 ence in December, 1917, in Uppsala, with representatives 
 from five neutral countries only. Its general state- 
 ments on international brotherhood, state and social 
 life have found acceptance in different quarters of the 
 Church. Our invitation was reiterated twice for two 
 different epochs in the year 1918, but it was not possible 
 to have an ecumenical meeting during the war. All our 
 correspondents, religious bodies as well as individual 
 churchmen, have been absolutely unanimous as to the 
 necessity of an ecumenical conference after peace. 
 
 Meanwhile, quite independently of our action, efforts 
 had been made for such a gathering of believers. Thus, 
 in Great Britain in 1917 the British Council for pro- 
 moting an international Christian meeting was founded, 
 and opened an energetic activity. An ecumenical con- 
 ference was also proposed by the British branch of our 
 World Alliance, by the important parts of the Church in 
 Hungary, and from Switzerland. 
 
 Already in 1916 the Federal Council in U. S. A. 
 started action in the same direction. Now that Federal 
 Council has proposed a really official ecumenical con- 
 ference for next year. Thus it seems to be evident 
 that Christendom in the north of Europe, the Federal 
 Council and leading men in Great Britain and on the 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 119 
 
 continent are unanimous in desiring a gathering, as 
 ecumenical as possible, during next year or at the 
 epoch that will prove advisable. 
 
 Now a few words (i) on the character of such a 
 gathering, (2) on the comprehensiveness of it, and (3) 
 on the place where it might be held. 
 
 I. Our task is not to bring organizations together, 
 but to unite hearts and minds and endeavours. True 
 believers and followers of Christ have always been a 
 minority even in the Christian communions, and they 
 will ever remain a minority. But it is essential to use 
 for Christian aims all communions of the Church, and 
 all Christian organizations to which it is our privilege 
 to belong. 
 
 Our ecumenical conference has to be clearly dis- 
 tinguished from the great task that is called the World 
 Conference on Faith and Order. The commission sent 
 to Europe for that World Conference quite agreed with 
 us in that respect. Our conference may be a most im- 
 portant preparation for the World Conference on Faith 
 and Order, but it will not deal with Faith nor Order, 
 but some well-defined urgent practical aims. 
 
 Union for such purposes does not require unity in 
 Faith and Order. I remind you of the doctrine in the 
 Augsburg Confession and the Thirty-nine Articles in 
 that respect. Dr. Carroll renders the same doctrine in 
 his Primer on Church Unity, answer 49. Uniformity 
 is not necessary for common preaching and striving in 
 actual needs of mankind. The Report of the Arch- 
 bishop’s Fifth Questionnaire says (page 2) : " We say 
 deliberately that in the region of moral or social ques- 
 tions we desire all Christians to bepn at once to act 
 toother as if they were one body in one visible fellow- 
 ship. This could be done by all alike without any in- 
 jury to theological principles.” 
 
 ^ I have tried to define the chief objects of the ecumen- 
 ical conference in an article which appeared some weeks 
 ago in The Contemporary Review, London. They seem 
 to me to be: (A) Common doctrine and endeavour 
 for international Christian brotherhood and organized 
 
120 IFNOTATJinTEDCHTJBCH— WHAT? 
 
 unity o£ nations; (B) Christian principles and action 
 for social renewal of society; further (C) a common 
 voice must be created for the Christian conscience. I 
 advocate an ecumenical council representing Christen- 
 dom in a spiritual way. 
 
 2. As to the comprehensiveness of this proposed 
 gathering, good reasons speak for beginning with 
 evangelical. Christendom only, in order to create a com- 
 mon platform for our part of the Catholic Church 
 before inviting the Orthodox and Roman divisions of 
 the Church. 
 
 But there are also good reasons and warm sympathies 
 for forming the scope as comprehensive as possible at 
 once. 
 
 3. As to the place of the conference my brethren in 
 Copenhagen and Christiania and myself who form since 
 November, 1914, a committee on Christian unity, have 
 reiterated our invitation to one of the Scandinavian 
 countries. 
 
 “ Christiania, Copenhagen, Uppsaea, 
 8th September, 1919. 
 
 “A deep sense of the responsibility and of the pos- 
 sibilities for the Christian Church in the present crisis 
 of our civilization forced us more than two years ago 
 to invite the various sections of the Church of Christ 
 and leading churchmen in different countries to an 
 international Christian conference, in order to strengthen 
 by prayer and mutual understanding the conviction of 
 unity among all believers in Christ in testifying that the 
 Cross of Christ is the uniting force that transcends all 
 earthly divisions. 
 
 “ The task of that conference should also be that 
 of taking up those complicated questions that have 
 arisen concerning international Christian fellowship, the 
 social and economical renewal, the value of lawful order, 
 and other heavy duties of our Christendom which have 
 been more or less neglected, and in regard to which 
 there ought to be common doctrine and preaching, and 
 a common indefatigable endeavour amongst all be- 
 lievers and in all sections of the Church. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 121 
 
 “Ojr undertaking was received with sympathy by 
 different groups of the Church in belligerent countries 
 as well as in our neutral parts of the world. It is 
 especially noteworthy that in England, quite irrespective 
 of our initiative, activities from various directions were 
 set in motion to promote such a conference. 
 
 “ Various difficulties prevented the conference from 
 meeting in its intended form, and we preferred to con- 
 fine ourselves to a conference of neutrals, instead of 
 having a conference without a fair and full representa- 
 tion of Christendom from both of the then belligerent 
 parties. 
 
 “ The conference, which met at Uppsala in December, 
 1917, made considerable contributions to the aims of an 
 ecumenical gathering, which it is one of our chief duties 
 now to prepare and organize. We, servants of the 
 Church in the three Scandinavian countries, hereby beg 
 to invite an ecumenical conference to meet in one of 
 our countries, in Uppsala, Christiania, or Copenhagen, 
 or another place in Scandinavia, during the following 
 year, possibly in the latter part of the summer. 
 
 “ We understand that our fellow-Christians in the 
 Scandinavian countries would consider it a great privi- 
 lege to receive such a gathering, and that our proposed 
 conference will not in any part of the world be sup- 
 ported with warmer, wider and deeper sympathy and 
 with more ardent intercession than in Scandinavia, 
 where the need of such a manifestation of the unity of 
 the Church and of preparation’ for the duties imperi- 
 ously imposed by the time, has been alive and strong 
 during those apocalyptic years. 
 
 “ In mutual service for Christ, we remain, 
 
 “ Yours faithfully, 
 
 “ H. OsTBNFEi,D, 
 
 Bishop of Se eland, Denmark. 
 
 "Jens Tandberg, 
 
 Bishop of Christiania, Norway. 
 
 “ Nathan Soderbeom, 
 Archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden.” 
 
122 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 PROPOSED ECUMENICAE CONFERENCE 
 
 Resolution passed by the International Committee of the 
 World Alliance for Promoting International friend- 
 ship through the Churches at its meeting at The 
 Hague on October 2nd, iQig. 
 
 That the International Committee o£ the World Al- 
 liance desires to express its deep sympathy with the 
 proposal for an ecumenical conference of the different 
 Christian communions to consider urgent practical tasks 
 before the Church at this time, and the possibilities of 
 cooperation in testimony and actiom 
 
 The committee expresses the conviction that such a 
 conference, if it can be arranged, will prove an in- 
 estimable blessing to mankind. 
 
 That this resolution be referred to each national 
 council with the request that it be communicated to the 
 Churches in their respective countries. 
 
 Nathan Sodeebwm. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT OF 
 NORTH AMERICA 
 
 First Steps 
 
 The call for a conference on this important subject 
 was issued by the Foreign Missionary Board of the 
 Presbyterian Church, South. Representatives of mis- 
 sion boards and allied interests in the United States 
 and Canada were asked to meet in New York City 
 on the seventeenth of December, 1918. One hundred 
 and thirty-five persons responded, representing most 
 of these organizations. Those present were unani- 
 mously agreed that the time had come for the working 
 bodies of the several denominations to endeavour so 
 to relate their activities as to present a united front 
 before the world and at the same time secure greater 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 123 
 
 eflSciency, with a corresponding increase of influence 
 and power, not to speak of the economies which would 
 naturally result. 
 
 As a further evidence that the Spirit of God was 
 moving, the Federal Council of the Churches at about 
 the same time called a meeting at Atlantic City with a 
 similar purpose in view. Ninety persons responded to 
 this call, and the same unanimity of opinion was ex- 
 pressed as to the Church’s needs and obligations as in 
 the other assembly. 
 
 At the New York meeting a committee of twenty was 
 created, which included many of the outstanding Chris- 
 tian leaders of the United States and Canada. This 
 committee was charged with the task of formulating 
 a preliminary statement that might serve as a working 
 basis for the development of plans for such a coopera- 
 tive effort as seemed called for. This committee has 
 been singularly successful in bringing together the lead- 
 ers of the many Christian forces which are moving in 
 the same direction. The result of their work is the 
 Interchurch World Movement. 
 
 Purpose and Scope 
 
 In order that there may be clear understanding re- 
 garding the purpose and scope of the movement, it 
 seems best to quote certain sections from the report 
 of the Committee of Twenty as adopted by the several 
 bodies listed in the foregoing: 
 
 “ To present a unified programme of Christian service 
 and to unite the Protestant Churches of North America 
 in the performance of their common task, thus making 
 available the values of spiritual power which come from 
 unity and coordinated Christian effort and meeting the 
 unique opportunities of the new era.” 
 
 “ While primarily a Home and Foreign Missionary 
 Movement, the movement is to be broad enough to 
 cover all those interests in the United States and Canada 
 outside of the local Church budget which are naturally 
 related to the missionary enterprise through national 
 agencies, denominational or interdenominational.” 
 
124 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT f 
 
 Survey 
 
 A thorough united survey of the home and foreign 
 fields of the world will be made for the purpose of se- 
 curing accurate and complete data as to what ought to 
 be done by the combined Churches to meet the needs 
 of the hour, and of at least the next five years. 
 
 Fieed Campaign 
 
 A field campaign will be undertaken to bring before 
 the Churches a knowledge of the needs of the com- 
 munity, the nation, and the world, as revealed by the 
 surveys; to arouse the Church to the realization of the 
 urgency of cooperative effort in meeting these needs, and 
 also to inspire and complete an organization of the 
 Christian forces competent to undertake an adequate 
 world programme. During the field campaign special 
 emphasis will be put upon education, intercession and 
 stewardship, and an attempt will be made to make ef- 
 fective the necessary resources of spiritual power, life 
 and money needed to carry out the world programme. 
 
 John R. Mott, 
 
 Chairman Executive Committee, 
 
 S. Bare Tayeor, 
 
 General Secretary, 
 347 Madison Ave., New York City. 
 
 VII 
 
 TOURING IN THE INTEREST OF CHRISTIAN 
 UNITY 
 
 (An Editorial from The Christian Union Quarterly, 
 October, 1919, and included here as one of the 
 methods in awakening interest in Christian unity.) 
 
 The editor of this journal made a tour during a part 
 of May and all of June from the Atlantic coast to the 
 middle west of the United States, speaking and holding 
 conferences in fourteen places. The purpose of this 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 125 
 
 tour was not so much to convey information regarding 
 the Christian union movement, as it was to find at first 
 hand the mind of the Church regarding this great issue. 
 
 The plan was to meet in an informal conference a 
 group of ministers and laymen to the number of forty 
 to sixty, including all communions in the city, then in 
 the afternoon of that day or the next day to meet a 
 group of women representing all communions. In most 
 instances a public meeting was held in the evening, and 
 on Sunday sometimes the whole day was given to 
 Christian unity, as was done in Lexington, Ky., under 
 the direction of the Rt. Rev. Lewis W. Burton, bishop 
 of that diocese. In that instance there was a Christian 
 unity ser\'ice in the First Methodist Church at eleven 
 o’clock, a union service of all the Churches of Lexington 
 in Christ Episcopal Cathedral at four o’clock, and a 
 Christian unity service at the First Presbyterian Church 
 at eight o’clock. In some cities an Episcopalian had 
 charge of all arrangements, in others. Disciples, Con- 
 gregationalists, etc. Rev. E. L. Goodwin, editor of 
 The Southern Churchman, and Rev. H. D. C. Maclachlan 
 were chairmen for Richmond; Rt. Rev. Lewis W. 
 Burton and Rev. I. J. Spencer, for Lexington; Rev. 
 A. B. Philputt, for Indianapolis; Rev. Edgar DeWitt 
 Jones, for Bloomington; Rev. F. W. Rothenburger, for 
 Springfield; Rev. Mr. Armstrong, secretary of the City 
 Federation, for St. Louis; Rev. R. B. Briney, for 
 Carthage, Mo. ; Hon. H. M. Beardsley, a Congrega- 
 tionalist, for Kansas City; Rev. M. Lee Sorey, for 
 Lawrence, Kansas; Rev. W. A. Shullenberger, for Des 
 Moines; Rev. A. M. Haggard, for Boone, la.; Rev. 
 C. C. Morrison, editor of The Christian Century, for 
 Chicago; Rev. R. W. Woodroofe, of the Episcopal 
 Church, and Rev. J. H. Goldner, for Cleveland, etc. 
 
 In most instances at the noon hour a luncheon for 
 fifty to a hundred was provided, and in other instances 
 a public dinner in the evening for several hundred. 
 Especially was this so in Chicago under the direction 
 of Rev. C. C. Morrison. Mr. Robert H. Gardiner, 
 Gardiner, Maine, secretary of the Commission on the 
 
126 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WH AT ! 
 
 World Conference on Faith and Order, was with me 
 in Baltimore and Richmond and Rev. F. W. Burnham, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, president of the American Christian 
 Missionary Society, was with me in Springfield and 
 St. Louis. Both of these rendered valuable service. 
 
 I sought to speak in behalf of three outstanding 
 movements for organic union. I named them in order : 
 first the Episcopal movement — the World Conference 
 on Faith and Order — always emphasizing that fine 
 twofold question of this conference — What does your 
 communion hold in common with all Christendom and 
 what does it hold as a special trust that differentiates 
 it from all other bodies and therefore justifies its 
 separate existence? The second is the Presbyterian 
 movement — the Council on Organic Union, which 
 met last December in Philadelphia, the ad interim 
 committee of which is now at work on a plan for 
 the union of all evangelical Protestants. This con- 
 ference will meet again in the winter. After that 
 the plan will be presented to the Protestant bodies for 
 definite action. Whether the plan now worked out or 
 another be adopted is secondary, only the evangelical 
 Protestants must get together, first, loosely bound 
 without interference with their denominational ma- 
 chinery, but to forthwith grow into a harmonious force 
 for united action. The third movement is that of the 
 Disciples — the Association for the Promotion of Chris- 
 tian Unity, Baltimore — ^which emphasizes local con- 
 ferences among all religious bodies, intercessory 
 prayer, for there can be no unity without the atmos- 
 phere of prayer, and the distribution of irenic literature. 
 The only office in the world where all kinds of Chris- 
 tian unity literature of irenic character under the au- 
 thorship of Protestants, Roman Catholics and Greek 
 Catholics can be obtained is in that office. They send 
 out 25,000 pieces of Christian unity mail a year and to 
 all parts of the world. 
 
 These three movements supplement each other. The 
 Episcopal movement is for the union of the whole 
 Church, the Presbyterian movement for the union of 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 127 
 
 evangelical Protestants, and the Disciple movement 
 helping both by their local conferences, leagues of in- 
 tercessory prayer and distributing irenic literature in 
 that interest. 
 
 This was doubtless the first tour of its kind ever 
 made in this country. I delivered sixty addresses. The 
 interest surpassed my expectations. There were always 
 many questions asked and in turn questions were freely 
 answered. There is a genuine desire for Christian 
 unity which cannot be smothered by reactionary efforts. 
 The inquiry in many instances was “ What can we do ? ” 
 Leagues for conferences, prayer and research must be 
 organized all over the country. The whole Church is 
 making the discovery that divisions are unspiritual, 
 unwise and unnecessary. A divided Church can never 
 produce the best spiritual results, and its attempts to 
 win the world in many instances rival the escapades of 
 Don Quixote rather than that fundamental unity which 
 characterized the life of the Founder of Christianity. 
 
 The distribution of literature has its function, but 
 the message of a united Church must be carried by in- 
 dividuals. In the instance of the Prohibition movement 
 for many years America had to be evangelized in that 
 interest before the abolition of the saloon. It is no less 
 so regarding the unity of the Church. There are both 
 opposition and indifference. These can be removed and 
 must be. Teams must go out until the whole nation has 
 been awakened. This awakening must not be on an 
 emotional basis, else it will quickly subside. There must 
 be literature, well written and well printed. Classes 
 must be organized for this work as in the temperance 
 cause and missionary endeavour. City, district, state and 
 national conferences must become permanent institu- 
 tions. It is the greatest task before the Church and 
 calls now for the best men and women in the various 
 communions. It will require large sums of money, but 
 when men and women of large means become more 
 interested in Christ and a lost world than in their 
 denominational peculiarities the money will come, for a 
 united Church is of God, preeminently, distinctly and 
 
128 IF NOT A UNITED CHUECH— WHAT! 
 
 eternally. Although great difficulties face us, the out- 
 look is radiant with hope. 
 
 While statesmen are planning for a league of nations, 
 as long years ago our forebears planned for a league of 
 independent states that made this union of the United 
 States of America, it is high time that the whole Church 
 should rally her forces for such a league of united 
 action, that not only the League of Nations may be 
 maintained, but that the new world may be upon better 
 foundations for permanent peace and social betterment 
 than it was in 1914. This is no choice of ours; it is a 
 necessity, for an unbelieving and wrecked world is the 
 price we are paying for our divisions. 
 
 VIII 
 
 ORGANIZATIONS FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity, 
 Inc. Having its inception in the work of Thomas Camp- 
 bell, 1809, present organization 1910, President, Rev. 
 Peter Ainslie; Secretary, Rev. H. C. Armstrong, Semi- 
 nary House, Baltimore, Md., U. S. A. For intercessory 
 prayer, friendly conferences and distribution of irenic 
 literature, “ till we all attain unto the unity of the faith.” 
 Pentecost Sunday is the day named for special prayers 
 for and sermons on Christian unity in all Churches. 
 
 Association for the Promotion of the Unity of 
 Christendom, 1857, President, Athelstan Riley, Esq., 2 
 Kensington Court, London; Secretary in the United 
 States, Rev. Calbraith Bourn Perry, Cambridge, N. Y. 
 For intercessory prayer for the reunion of the Roman 
 Catholic, Greek and Anglican communions. 
 
 Christian Unity Association of Scotland, 1903, 
 Secretary, Rev. Robert W. Weir, Edinburgh. For main- 
 taining, fostering and expressing the consciousness of 
 the underlying unity that is shared by many members of 
 the different Churches in Scotland. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 129 
 
 Christian Unity Foundation, 1910, Secretary, Rev. 
 W. C. Emhardt, Newtown, Berks Co., Pa. For the 
 promotion of Christian unity throughout the world by 
 research and conference. 
 
 Churchmen’s Union, 1896, President, Prof. Percy 
 Gardner ; Hon. Secretary, Rev. C. Moxon, 3 St. George’s 
 Square, London S. W., England. For cultivation of 
 friendly relations between the Church of England and 
 all other Christian bodies. 
 
 Commission on the World Conference on Faith and 
 Order, 1910, President, Rt. Rev. Charles P. Anderson; 
 Secretary, Robert H. Gardiner, Esq., Gardiner, Me., 
 U. S. A. For a world conference of all Christians rela- 
 tive to the unity of Christendom. 
 
 Council on Organic Union, 1918, Ad Interim Com- 
 mittee, Chairman, Rev. W. H. Roberts, Philadelphia, 
 Pa. ; Secretary, Rev. Rufus W. Miller, Witherspoon 
 Building, Philadelphia. For the organic union of the 
 Evangelical Churches in the United States of America. 
 
 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
 America, 1908, President, Rev. Frank Mason North; 
 Secretary, Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, 105 E. 22d St., 
 New York. For the cooperation of the various Prot- 
 estant communions in service rather than an attempt to 
 unite upon definitions of theology and polity. 
 
 Free Church Fellowship, 1911, Rev. Malcolm Spen- 
 cer, Colue Bridge House. Rickmansworth, London, N. 
 For the cultivation of corporate prayer and thought for 
 a new spiritual fellowship and communion with all 
 branches of the Christian Church. 
 
 Interchurch World Movement of North America, 
 1919, Chairman Executive Committee, John R. Mott, 
 New York; General Secretary, S. Earl Taylor, 920 
 Broadway, New York. For giving and accomplishing 
 an adequate programme for Protestantism in the world. 
 
 National Council of the Evangelical Free 
 Churches of England, 1895, President, Rev. Principal 
 
130 IFNOT A UNITED CHUEOH— WHAT? 
 
 W. B. Selbie, Mansfield College, Oxford; Secretary, 
 Rev. F. B. Meyer, Memorial Hall, E. C., London. For 
 facilitating fraternal intercourse and cooperation among 
 the Evangelical Free Churches in England, 
 
 IX 
 
 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 {The hooks included in this list are by Greek Orthodox, 
 Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Con- 
 gregationalists, Methodists, Luther-ans, Baptists, 
 Disciples of Christ, etc.) 
 
 Agony of the Church, The. Velimirovio, London, 
 Student Christian Movement. 1917 $o.7S 
 
 Approaches Toward Church Unity. Smyth and 
 Walker. Yale University Press. 1919 1.25 
 
 Christian System, The. Campbell. St. Louis, 
 Christian Board of Publication i.oo 
 
 Christian Union. Garrison. St. Louis, Christian 
 Board of Publication. 1906 i.oo 
 
 Christian Union in Social Service. Carlisle. Lon- 
 don, Clarke & Co. 1913 2S. 6d. 
 
 Christian Unity at Work. Macfarland. Federal 
 Council I.oo 
 
 Church of Christ in Process of Transformation, 
 
 The. Douglas. Baltimore, Association for 
 the Promotion of Christian Unity 15 
 
 Church and Religious Unity, The. Kelly. Long- 
 mans. 1913 1.50 
 
 Church Divisions and Christianity. Grane. Mac- 
 millan. 1916 2.00 
 
 Churches at the Crossroads, a Study in Church 
 Unity, The. Shakespeare. London, Williams 
 and Norgate. 1919 7s. 6d. 
 
 Churches of the Federal Council, The. Macfarland. 
 
 Revell 1.00 
 
 English Church and Reunion, The. Chandler.: 
 Gorham. 1916 1.25 
 
APPENDIX 131 
 
 Fulness of Christ, The. Weston. Longmans. 1916. 2.00 
 Greek Orthodox Church, The. Callinicos. Long- 
 
 mans. 1918 
 
 Historical Documents Advocating Christian Union. 
 Young. Chicago, The Christian Century Co. 
 
 1904 1. 00 
 
 Holy Catholic Church and the Communion of 
 
 Saints, The. Swete. Macmillan. 1915 1.25 
 
 Hope of Reunion, The. Winnington-Ingram. Lon- 
 don, Wells Gardner, Darton and Co. 1919. ... is. 
 
 How to Promote Christian Union. Kershner. 
 
 Cincinnati, The Standard Publishing Co. 1916. i.oo 
 
 Kingdom of Christ, The. Maurice. Everyman’s 
 
 Library I.oo 
 
 Lectures on the Reunion of the Church. Ddllinger. 
 
 Dodd. 1872 1.50 
 
 Meaning of Christian Unity, The. Cobb. Crowell. 
 
 191S 1-25 
 
 Message of the Disciples for the Union of the 
 Church, The. Ainslie. Revell. 1913 I.oo 
 
 Our Plea for Union and the Present Crisis. Wil- 
 lett. Chicago, Christian Century Co 50 
 
 Our Sacred Heritage. Cooper. William Black- 
 wood and Sons. 1917 6d. 
 
 Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism. 
 
 Smyth. Scribner’s. 1908 1.00 
 
 Psychology of Relidous Sects, The. McComas. 
 Revell. 1912 1.25 
 
 Reconstruction of the American Church, The. 
 
 Haushalter. Boston, Badger. 1919 1.25 
 
 Religion of the Thinking Man. Lanier, Fredericks- 
 burg, Va 1.25 
 
 Restatement and Reunion. Streeter. Macmillan. 
 
 1914 75 
 
 Reunion: a Voice from Scotland. Cooper. Lon- 
 don, Robert Scott. 1918 3s. 
 
 Sevenfold Unity of the Christian Church, The. 
 
 Hall. Longmans. 1911 75 
 
 Symbolism, or Exposition of the Doctrinal Dif- 
 ferences Between Catholics and Protestants. 
 
132 IF NOT A UNITED OHUECH— WHAT? 
 
 Moehler. Translated by J. B. Robertson. New 
 York, Benzinger 2.50 
 
 That They All May Be One. Wells. Funk & 
 
 Wagnalls Co. 1905 75 
 
 That They All May Be One. Whyte. Armstrong. 
 
 1907 25 
 
 Thoughts of the Present Position of Protestantism. 
 
 Harnack. Macmillan. 1899 i.oo 
 
 Towards Christian Unity. Ainslie. Baltimore, 
 Association for the Promotion of Christian 
 Unity. 1919 25 
 
 Towards Reunion. Anglican and Free Church- 
 man. Macmillan. 1919 
 
 Union of Christian Forces in America, The. Ash- 
 worth. Philadelphia, American Sunday School 
 
 Union. 1915 75 
 
 United Church of the United States, The. Shields. 
 
 Scribner’s. 1895 2.50 
 
 Unity and Missions. Brown. Revell. 1915....... 1.50 
 
 Unity and Schism. Lacey. Morehouse Pub. Co. 
 
 1918 2.00 
 
 What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? Simms. 
 Revell. 1913. 1.50 
 
 Working Conference on the Union of American 
 
 Methodism, A. Methodist Book Concern. 1916. i.oo 
 
 The Christian Union Quarterly, Established in 1911. 
 Seminary House, Baltimore, Md. ; Fleming H. 
 Revell Co., New York; Oliphants, London and 
 Edinburgh; and Maruzen Company, Tokyo. 
 Annual subscription $1.00 
 
 The Constructive Quarterly, edited by Silas McBee. 
 George H. Doran Company, New York; Hum- 
 phrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 
 London. Annual subscription $2.50 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
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