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 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 VICTORIA ROAD CHURCH, 
 
 OJV SUjYDAY, SEPT. 2Gth, 1880,- 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, I.A., 
 
 IN ANTICIPATION OF THE 
 
 GHUBCH CONGEESS. 
 
 LEICESTER : 
 
 PRINTED I!Y S. BARKER AND CO., WELLINGTON-STREET.
 
 Ephesians IV., 6. — " One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism',' &'c. 
 
 This is a fine picture, but is it true ? Is it a dream or a reality ? a 
 divine fact or a magnificent human fiction ? Has there ever been 
 this unity in the Church ? Is there anything in the Church to-day 
 which bears the faintest resemblance to it ? and is there any prospect 
 in the near or far off future that Christ's prayer will be fulfilled — 
 " That they all may be one ?" 
 
 If we answer these questions from a superficial view of things, we 
 shall unhesitatingly answer no ! Put the question to the general 
 world, and there will be quite a chorus of noes ! Church History, 
 which deals mainly with the froth and wreckage that the great sea of 
 religious life flings upon the shore — with the quarrels of sects, and the 
 wranglings of ambitious priests and papal bulls and anathemas, and 
 religious wars and religious persecutions — will answer emphatically no ! 
 Sceptics will even treat the question with a sneer ; they will make fun 
 of us for asking it. In their eyes the boasted unity of the Church is 
 the most solemn farce that has ever been enacted ; the vainest of 
 Christ's dreams; the maddest and most extravagant of unfulfilled 
 prophecies. In their eyes the seamless garment of Christ is a rent 
 and tattered rag, which for eighteen hundred years his own disciples 
 have been tearing with hand and teeth and claw, until hardly a patch 
 of it remains ; and the Holy Catholic Church, not one fold with one 
 Shepherd, but a number of hostile folds with more of the wolf than 
 the sheep about them — hating each other more than they hate the 
 world. To them, indeed, the question is a theme for perpetual 
 laughter — to be answered, if it is worthy of an answer — with a fierce 
 contemptuous jibe. 
 
 And we, who are far too much in earnest to treat the question 
 thus lightly ; we who have far too much faith in Christ to think that 
 any of his visions will remain unfulfilled, are yet disposed to look 
 with doubtful, sorrowful, and half hopeless eyes on the distractions 
 and dissensions of the Church, and to conclude, that of all the 
 promises which Christ and His Apostles uttered, there is none so far 
 off realization, as that which pictured a Unity of Faith, Hope, and 
 Love in one great blood-bought company. 
 
 But now let us try to look at the question this morning with 
 other and larger eyes. Let us try to get beneath the superficial 
 crust and feel the throbbing heart of it; and with no desire to 
 minimize and explain away the differences and divisions of the 
 Church, but rather with intent to bring into prominence those great 
 underlying principles of unity which escape the casual glance, let us 
 ask what are the real grand promising facts of the case. 
 
 The local circumstances suggest such a discussion. We are about 
 to welcome to our hospitality the membcES of a sister church. From 
 our secret hearts and in our public assemblies there arises a prayer
 
 for their prosj)erty. If our desires, and hopes, and intercessions can 
 bring down the Spirit of God on their Congress, verily they will not 
 lack the Divine presence ; with our inmost souls we say, Grace, 
 mercy, and peace be upon all them that love the Lord Jesus Christ 
 in sincerity and truth. All thoughts of rivalry, jealousy, envyings, 
 and differences vanish at this moment so completely, that we are 
 ashamed even to name them. We are only anxious to kneel with 
 these brethren at the feet of our common Father, and wish them God 
 speed in the name of our common Lord. 
 
 Now, does not this fact of itself suggest, that there is more unity 
 in Christ's Church than common report would show ? Some of us 
 have, at times, spoken and thought hard things of the Church of 
 England, and we have writhed and groaned under the hard, unjust 
 things which that Church has said of us. The bitter conflicts of cen- 
 turies have left still open and rankling wounds. We are separated, 
 and still shall be, by a multitude of questions which we cannot aftbrd 
 to deem unimportant. There are differences of method and adminis- 
 tration, and ritual, and especially of sacramental views, and priestly 
 ordination — differences which none but weak minds would try to 
 smooth over with the plaster of a sham charity. To some of us, at 
 least, it would be nothing less than infidelity to our convictions to 
 attempt it. We should be dishonest to ourselves, and therefore un- 
 faithful to our Master, if we pooh-poohed these differences away as 
 things of no consequence. Yet, at a time like this, we put them all 
 aside — the crust is broken through, and we touch the heart. We feel 
 that we are brothers, though our paths have diverged — the sight of 
 our common Father bids us be at peace ; our souls kiss one another, 
 though our lips have held aloof These men are no more to us the 
 members of the Church of England — they are members of the Church 
 of Christ. The same divine Spirit works in them as in us. They are 
 praying to the same Father, and bowing before the same cross. 
 They are made mighty by the same faith, and rejoicing in the same 
 hope. They are swayed by the same motives, and striving together 
 for the same end. Their confessions are ours, their praises are ours, 
 their creeds are for the most part ours, their sympathies are ours. 
 With the world we have hardly anything in common ; with them we 
 have nearly everything — a hundred sacred and eternal principles 
 make us close akin. We are as the divergent channels of one great 
 sea — warm here and cold there ; green or blue in one place, black, 
 white, or red in another ; here almost tideless, there sweeping in 
 great tidal floods on the shore — but the same sea ; feeling the pulsa- 
 tions of the same divine currents ; swayed by the same universal tidal 
 movement ; sweetened by the same salt, and working together to 
 keep the world fragrant and pure. They are our kinsmen in the 
 Lord, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh — and we greet them 
 with a holy kiss. 
 
 It is always the distinguished feature of the shallow mind, that it 
 looks only on the surface, and therefore magnifies those differences 
 which float on the surface. It never goes deep enough to see the 
 underlying principles of unity. 

 
 A shallow mind will tell you that there is nothing in common 
 between an oak tree and a rose bush ; between the fall of an apple 
 and the movements of a planet ; between an aristocrat and a working 
 man ; and between a Romish Church and a protestant conventicle. 
 He is deceived by appearances, these things /ook so different, they 
 wear such different garments, and put on such a different face, ard 
 speak with such different language, that he concludes at once, as a 
 thing which no sane man will dispute, that they are as far apart as the 
 poles — that they are opposed to each other as light and darkness, and 
 that there is not a single point where they can touch and throb 
 together. Yet the deep thinker finds that they have perhaps nine 
 points in common, and only in the tenth part are divergent and hostile. 
 
 If he is a botanist, he will prove to you that the oak tree and the 
 rose bush— and things far more unlike — are allied in the closest 
 kinship ; formed on the same plan, growing by the same laws, and 
 yielding their fruit and foliage on the same eternal principles. If he 
 is an astronomer, he will show you that the fall of an apple to the 
 ground is essentially the same movement as the revolution of planets 
 in their orbits. If he is a moral philosopher, he will discover that the 
 same sentiments, hopes, and passions throb under the broad cloth of 
 the aristocrat as under the corduroy of the workman. And if he is a 
 clear thinking and large-hearted theologian, he will find the same senti- 
 ments of reverent aspiration, faith, and love, underlying the pageantry 
 of the Romish Church, breathing and living under the weight of 
 its smothering formality, which he will find in the plainest Primitive 
 Methodist or Friends Meeting House. It is only the superficial mind 
 that makes the surface differences of infinite importance, the careful 
 and devout mind looks deeper, looks further, and rejoices in the 
 hidden principles of unity. 
 
 It were well that we should look with that clearer and more 
 discerning spirit upon the Church of to-day. For verily, if we look 
 in this spirit, we shall find that these words of Paul are not a satire 
 and not a fictitious dream, but a deep and solemn reality — '' There is 
 one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism ; one God and Father of all." For 
 
 I. The whole Church, no matter how divided, acknowledges 
 one Lord. Christ is the only master. At His feet all Christians of 
 every name gather. By His cross all of every name are attracted ; 
 and to all of them, no matter what their professions, He is " the chief 
 among ten thousand and the altogether lovely." There is not a 
 Christian soul anywhere who does not acknowledge Christ as supreme 
 — the only ultimate source of authority — the only potentate whose 
 will is to be implicity obeyed. Even those who kiss the pope's feet, 
 and trust him as the infallible guide, do it only because they think he 
 his Christ's vicegerent, and that in honouring the representative, they 
 are worshipping the king. When they kneel at the altar of the virgin, 
 it is only with the hope that she will lay their petitions at the great 
 master's feet — she is nothing to them in herself, they only revere her 
 because they think she commands Christ's ear, and has continual 
 access to His presence. Of course we know that all this is a poor
 
 vain superstition ; a miserable mockery indeed to suppose that either 
 pope or virgin is needed to remind Christ of His Church, and 
 press upon Him the claims of the contrite sinner or the struggling 
 saint ; a strange travesty of Faith to think that Christ is so far off, 
 and so hard of hearing, as to need either a representative on earth, or 
 an advocate to refresh His memory in heaven. We brush all that 
 aside as a diseased excrescence which has grown on the healthy tree 
 of Christian life, and corrupted it. But when we have brushed all 
 that aside, we find that there is a large substratum of living devotion 
 left. They are as anxious as we are to know what is Christ's will. 
 His commands are paramount, if they can only find what His com- 
 mandments are. They would defy both Pope and virgin if they had 
 reason to suspect that Pope and virgin did not speak in the name 
 of Christ. There runs through all their worship a sort of groping like 
 that of Job, " O that I knew where I might find Him, that I might 
 come even to His seat," Under all the froth of their superstitions 
 there flows a deep devotion to Him ; and if we want to find expres- 
 sions of passionate love and implicit trust — if we want to find souls 
 kneeling in an ecstasy of rapture and joy before the Cross of Jesus, 
 and adoring Him as their present life and their future Judge and 
 King, we have no need to go to Protestant writers. We may find 
 strains that melt our very souls in lliomas k Kempis and Francis 
 Xavier, and John Henry Newman, and a host of lesser saints and 
 leaders of the Romish Church. All through the Christian world, then, 
 there goes up the same testimony from innumerable lips. He is the 
 King. His name is above every name, and in spite of all divisions 
 and heresies, Paul's words are deeply, solemnly true, " There is one 
 Lord." 
 
 n. And in the same way, and without any stretch of imagination, 
 we may rightly contend that there is " One Faith." It would be indeed 
 ridiculous to make that assertion if Faith meant what the multitude of 
 Church doctors have tried to make it mean. The Faith of the Church 
 is usually defined as the sum of its creeds, confessions, and formulas. 
 It includes all that the sometimes misguided Fathers of the Church 
 have laid down as necessary to salvation, all the articles of the 
 Athanasian and other creeds expressed often in abstruse metaphysical 
 language, which nobody in earth or heaven can understand, and each 
 with its damnatory clause attached. It includes all the decrees of the 
 great councils in which Bishops vied with each other in spinning subtle- 
 ties and fine wire-drawn destinctions, and religiously anathematizing 
 every body who had either the courage or the common sense to differ 
 from them. O, if "the Faith" of the Church means that, or anything 
 like that, it would be the most solemn and monstrous of jokes to 
 declare with Paul that there is " One Faith." The Thirty-nine Articles 
 of the Church of England contain six hundred and seventy distinct 
 propositions, the Westminster confession and catechism about ten times 
 that number, and the decrees of the Council of Trent a number which I 
 believe no man has yet found time to number. One staggers at the 
 multiplicity of doctrines and conditions. No wonder that the Faith is
 
 not fit to be discussed by the illiterate mind, and that infallible Church 
 doctors are needed to keep us from going astray, and to lead us into all 
 truth. If the Faith means this, there are about as many faiths as there are 
 theologians, and distraction and disunion everywhere, with no pros- 
 pect of anything else. But, thank God, this was not what Paul and 
 his Master meant by Faith. With them it was an infinitely simpler 
 thing. It embraced only three or four propositions at the most. 
 Christ expressed it in two words, " Follow me." Paul put it in one 
 short sentence, '•' If thou shalt believe in thine heart, and confess 
 with thy lips, that Jesus is the Christ, and that God hath raised Him 
 from the dead, thou shalt be saved." 
 
 What a marvellous scattering of decrees, and formulas, and great 
 dust heaps of propositions there is there ! All the great mountains 
 of pamphlets and folios, and wind bags which doctors have piled up 
 between Christ and the believing soul are burst and dispersed, 
 and there is left an uplifted Cross, an Almighty Saviour risen from the 
 dead, and a company which no man can number, bowing before Him 
 and confessing simply thou art Christ the Son of the living God. 
 Thou hast subdued sin for us, and conquered death ; Thou hast the 
 keys of heaven ; Thou art our only hope, and life, and joy. Now 
 that is the Faith reduced to its first beautiful heavenly simplicity, and 
 reading it in that way, we shall not be far wrong in saying that the 
 Faith of the Church is 07ie. It has many opinions ; it has an infinite 
 number of dogmas, some of them of little worth, and some of great 
 worth. God forbid that I should speak slightingly of them. But 
 it has only one Faith ; for all the members of the Church are alike in 
 this. They recognise Christ as the one being whom it is good to 
 follow ; the one beauty without stain ; the one power without weak- 
 ness ] the one love which knows no change ; the one truth without the 
 shadow of a lie. They all alike grant that He is the one source of 
 salvation, and the fount of life ; that He has given death its death- 
 blow, and opened the gates of immortality ; that He is the judge 
 whom God hath appointed, and that on His smile or on His frown 
 depend the issues of eternity for every struggling human soul. 
 
 That is the faith which unites all that bear the Christian name ; 
 the faith before whose immense importance all minor distinctions 
 vanish away, and we clasp hands of brotherhood with all those who 
 are moved, exalted, and inspired by it, and exclaim with Paul, 
 "There is one Lord and one Faith." 
 
 III. Dare we go on to say " There is one Baptism," remembering 
 how that word has been bandied about, and the thing squabbled over, 
 and fought over until the life blood has been wrenched out of it, and 
 nothing left but a tattered rag held up before the nations as the 
 symbol of the Church's fury and distraction. Administered in at 
 least ten distinct ways, defined in more than a hundred ways, treated 
 by one large section of the Church as a piece of divine magic and 
 thaumaturgy which works an instantaneous miraculous change, 
 rejected in toto by another section of believers as the mother of 
 untold abuses ; here regarded as the essential condition of salvation.
 
 8 
 
 then passed slightly over as of but infinitimesal consequence — here 
 preached and declaimed about as though it were the principal gate 
 of heaven — there almost forgotten, because men have grown weary of 
 the useless fight, and turned themselves to higher truths. Who shall 
 dare to say in face of all this that there is " One Baptism." 
 
 Yet, perhaps if we knew what was in Paul's mind we should 
 venture to say it. For I question if he was thinking of the water 
 and the Baptismal font at all. He was thinking rather of the thing 
 that lay beneath the sign. He was thinking of that Divine Spirit 
 which bathed a man's whole nature, and washed the old, stained, 
 corrupted life out of him, and made him a new creature in Christ 
 Jesus. He was thinking that there was no heavenly life for any man, and 
 no heavenly emotions, no heavenly joy, until he was brought into living 
 communion with Jesus, through ihe operation of that spirit. And if 
 that was what he meant by Baptism, we may use his words now, and 
 say " there is one Baptism." 
 
 For the whole Church of Christ clings to this — amid the fight over 
 font and baptistry, and dipping and pouring, and infants and adults, 
 there is one spot of holy ground where the Church drops its weapons, 
 and cries agreed. All unite in the confession, that the new life is not 
 man's work, and not a process of natural growth — but born of the 
 will of God, and by the Baptism of the Spirit. When it comes, and 
 how, voices difter, and differ endlessly. But that it does come all 
 alike confess. All alike confess that the poor, weak, sin weighted 
 soul cannot rise heavenward until the Spirit of God touches it, and 
 endows it with heavenly wings ; and that it can never be fit for God's 
 presence, until the Spirit has washed it in the divine fountain of truth, 
 and purity, and grace — that is the " one Baptism." And so it is not 
 a vain thing to say, as we look Ovcr a divided Church, there is " one 
 Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism." And it is good to think of 
 these things : thank God, we are getting to think of them more. We 
 are looking with clearer eyes and, I trust, devouter minds, beneath 
 the diverse surface of Church life, and rejoicing in the deeper life of faith, 
 and hope, and reverence, in which we all share. There are many 
 errors, which not only disfigure the face but make the very heart 
 of the Church diseased, and we strive to be free from them, so far 
 as we know them we hate them, and would hold no parley with 
 them, and we pray God in His mercy to deliver the whole Church 
 from them. We ^i^r,? not regard them as trivial things. But mean- 
 while we glory in the thought that there is a deep current of true 
 Godly devotion and life underneath. We are learning a diviner charity. 
 We are making heaven bigger, and Christ's love more. We are 
 consigning the damnatory clauses of our creed to the moles and 
 bats. We are trusting less in Church doctors and councils, and 
 more in the simplicity of our master. Instead of fashioning anathemas, 
 as of old, we are preparing greetings for all that love the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; and our warmest and holiest greetings to day are for the 
 brethren who are coming into the midst of us, to consult and pray about 
 the things of God, and who are of like faith and hope with ourselves.
 
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