Approaches Towards Church Uni
Edited by-
Newman Smyth and Williston Walker.

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APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY

APPROACHES TOWARDS
CHURCH UNITY
EDITED BY
NEWMAN SMYTH
AND
WILLISTON WALKER

NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFOED • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXIX

COPYRIGHT, I919, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PREFACE
REUNION of the churches has become now a practi
cal question. The end of the war leaves this as
__ the next Christian thing to be done. Happily the
sentiment for unity is rising and becoming a strong impul
sive movement throughout the Christian community. It
requires, especially among the leaders, in all the churches
the will to unity. It demands also intelligent direction as
well as a common venture of faith.
For this reason it seems now highly desirable that the
materials for discussions and conferences concerning unity
should be rendered as available as possible for the general
public and for the use of ministers who may not have con
venient access to large libraries. To make some contribu
tion to this end is the aim of this publication, so far as the
limits of a book not too large for general use may permit.
The writers co-operating in it have accordingly avoided
advocating or urging any particular plans or measures now
pending for greater unification of the forces of the churches;
but it has been their common object to present results of
historical studies and vital principles of organic unity which
should be taken into due consideration in any plans or
common approaches towards unity. Besides the essays which
constitute the main body of this volume, there have been
added accounts of some conferences and endeavors in
former times to seek the peace of the churches, of which
our general histories have taken little note. They will be
found to contain many expressions that are strikingly per
tinent to present conditions. Some precedents and opinions
also relating to special problems of unity have been included
5

PREFACE
in the following pages. An appendix contains statements
for convenient reference relative to plans and approaches
now under consideration, and to which the attention of
religious conventions and ecclesiastical bodies in the coming
months may be called.

CONTENTS

The Early Development of Church Officers.
Williston Walker . . . . .11
II
Vital Principles of Church Development. New
man Smyth ...... 36
1. Biological Criticism of Newman's Devel
opment of Doctrine .... 42
2. Analogies of Church Development from
Biology ..... 47
3. Vital Values of Various Symbols of Faith
and Worship ..... 54
III
Concerning Schism. Newman Smyth . . 65
IV
The Historical Method of Approach. Raymond
Calkins ....... 74
V
The Place of the Creed in the Life of the Church.
Raymond Calkins . . . . 91
VI
Concerning Unity. The Rt. Rev. Bishop C. H.
Brent ....... 109
7

CONTENTS VII
Some Historical Materials for Present Uses.
Newman Smyth . . . . 113
1. Conferences between Roman Catholics and
Protestants in the Seventeenth Century 113
a. The Conference at Thorn, 1645 • JI3
b. The Work of Spinola, Bishop of Neu-
stadt . . . . -US
c. Molanus' Proposals . . .118
d. Correspondence between Molanus,
Leibnitz, and Bossuet, 1692-1701 . 120
2. Movements for Reunion of Protestant
Churches . . . . .124
a. The Peacemaking Travels of John
Dury ..... 124
b. Conferences for Reunion of the
Churches in England . . . . 132
VIII
Historical Precedents and Opinions. Newman
Smyth ....... 138
1. Concerning Ordination by Bishops . . 138
2. Concerning Sacrament and Orders . 144
IX
Appendix ....... 147
1. The Lambeth Quadrilateral . . .147
2. For a World Conference . . .147
3. First Interim Statement of Joint Anglican
and Nonconformist Committee . .150
4. The Second Interim Statement . 153
5. Proposals for an Approach toward Unity
by a Conference of Episcopalians and
Congregationalists . . . .158

CONTENTS
6. Proposals for Organic Unity Initiated by
the General Assembly of the Presbyte
rian Church, U. S. A. . . .165
7. The Interchurch World Movement . .168
8. Preparation for Convening the World Con
ference on Faith and Order . .169

I
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF
CHURCH OFFICERS

NO problem in church history is more difficult than
that of the beginnings of Christian organization,
largely owing to the scantiness of the evidence,
and the desire, manifested as early as the second century,
to trace the beginnings of then existing institutions to the
apostolic age. The utmost that can be done is to trace the
scattered hints of the course of development and to confess
ignorance regarding many stages in the progress where the
evidence is insufficient for a clear judgment. There will
appear reason to conclude, also, that while church organi
zation had acquired a remarkable uniformity by the close
of the second century, its course of development was not
everywhere the same, and that its organs were unlike in
different portions of the church during much of this period.
On the departure of its Lord, the leadership of the Jeru
salem congregation was taken by Peter (Acts i: 15). To
him the conviction had first come that Christ had risen from
the dead (I Cor. 15: 5), and he was in that sense the rock
apostle on whom the Church was built (Mat. 16: 18).
Peter it was who addressed the multitude on the day of
Pentecost (Acts 2: 14), and was the spokesman in the early
controversies with Jewish authorities and opponents (Acts
3: 4, 12; 4: 8; 5: 3, 9, 29). With Peter, John was asso
ciated with less conspicuity of leadership (Acts 3: 1, 4, 11;
11

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
4: 13, 19). This leadership appears to have been far more
personal than as deference to apostleship, for when Paul
made his first visit to Jerusalem as a Christian, James, "the
Lord's brother," who was certainly not one of the Twelve,
was eminent in the congregation (Gal. 1: 19), and by the
time of Paul's second visit was one of those "reputed to be
pillars" (Gal. 2:9). A few years later James's leadership
was not shared with others of anything like equal conspicu
ity (Gal. 2: 12; Acts 21: 18). The guidance of the Jeru
salem congregation was therefore, long before the death of
the leading apostles, in other hands than those of members
of the Twelve. This development may well raise the ques
tion whether the author of "Acts" is not influenced by tra
ditional ideas of development in representing the apostles as
acting as a board as fully as he does (Acts 6:2; 8: 14, etc.).
James, for some years before his martyrdom, about 63,
was undoubtedly the head of the Jerusalem congregation.
Second-century tradition, and many later scholars, have
seen in this position an episcopate; but the term bishop is
applied to James by no New Testament writer. On his
death, though perhaps not till after the capture of Jerusalem
and destruction of the temple by Titus, James was succeeded
as ruler of the Jerusalem congregation by Symeon, the reason
for the choice being, according to the gossipy Hegesippus,
that "he was a cousin of the Lord" (Eusebius, "Church
History," 4: 22). The prominence of those thus reputed
kinsmen of Christ would seem to make the conclusion prob
able that we have here a rudimentary caliphate. At all
events no similar succession is to be found, naturally, on
Gentile soil. So peculiar in these respects were the Jeru
salem conditions that no safe conclusions can be drawn
from them as to development elsewhere.
The service of the Jerusalem congregation speedily re
quired subdivision of labor. A dispute regarding the distri
bution of the daily food led to the appointment of a com
mittee of seven to whom the task could be entrusted (Acts
12

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
6: 1-6). Whether this was the origin of the diaconate, as
Christian tradition of the third century affirmed, or a special
committee for a particular need, is impossible to say. The
name "deacon" occurs neither in connection with them nor
elsewhere in "Acts." Yet the functions entrusted to the
men thus chosen were similar in nature to those later dis
charged by deacons in the Gentile congregations. One
inference from this early act of the Jerusalem body may be
justifiably made, namely, that it is always in the power of
the church to constitute new agencies to meet new necessi
ties as they arise. If primitive Christianity could meet the
needs of its dependent widows by special appointments,
modern Christianity can care for the religious training of
its young people by the designation of a Sunday School
superintendent, and such officers are of its "ministry" in
the one case as truly as in the other.
In regard to one further organ of the Jerusalem congre
gation larger knowledge is desirable. In speaking of the
relief sent to Judea from Antioch in the famine in the
reign of Claudius, the author of "Acts" records that it was
received by the "elders" (irpto-BvTepoi) (Acts 11:30). No
hint of the origin of the group thus casually designated is
given. Hence most various interpretations have been given
by scholars. By some they have been looked upon as iden
tical with the Committee of Seven just mentioned, since
their reception of the contribution would seem fitting for
those whose duties were the superintendence of distribution.
By more scholars they have been considered an adoption of
the familiar officials of the synagogue. Others believe that
the author of "Acts" has thrown back into a more primitive
period the institutions of his own age. Yet others maintain
that elders were not, in this early age, officers in any proper
sense, but the older members of the congregation from whom
leaders would naturally come. While the author of "Acts"
evidently regards elders as officers (e.g. 14: 23; 15: 22; 20:
17, 28), countenance is lent to the view just named by the
13

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
very ancient document which he has preserved in connection
with the Council of Jerusalem which it issued in the names
of "the apostles and elder brethren" (Acts 15: 23). The
matter is further complicated by the declaration of the
author of "Acts" that Paul and Barnabas at the conclusion
of their first missionary journey "appointed for them elders
in every church" (Acts 14: 23), a statement which is with
out any confirmation in any of the epistles unquestionably
ascribed to Paul, and which could hardly have escaped men
tion had it been an apostolic practice. Here it would seem
well-nigh certain that the author is reading back the condi
tions of later years. Yet some scholars affirm that Paul and
Barnabas, fresh from acquaintance with Palestinian Chris
tianity, may here in churches prevailing of converts of Jewish
antecedents have introduced the existing customs of Jeru
salem. The scantiness of the evidence renders all dogmatic
assertion unbecoming.
When Palestine is left for Gentile soil more light becomes
evident, thanks to the contemporary witness of Paul's great
epistles, though here many points are still tantalizingly
obscure. Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, in particular,
from their very subject, reveal of necessity an intimate view
of the state of the Corinthian church, — one of the chief
trophies of his missionary zeal and a prime object of his
care. The outstanding fact that impresses the reader is that
while Paul exercised a patriarchal authority over this church
of his foundation (e.g. I Cor. 4: 14, 15; 5: 11; 7: 8, 25;
11: 34; 14: 37; II Cor. 11: 8-10; 13: 2), and employed his
younger assistants in the work (e.g. I Cor. 4: 17; 16: 10;
II Cor. 1: 19; 7: 6, 7; 8: 23), there are no traces of local
officers to be found in the Corinthian church. The disgrace
fully disorderly scenes at the Love Feast and Lord's Supper
(I Cor. 11: 17-34), and confusions at the meeting for
instruction and worship (I Cor. 14: 26-40), would neces
sarily have involved an exhortation by the apostle to offi
cers had any such existed. The nearest intimation of any
14

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
approach towards official position is the apostolic entreaty
after commendation of the house of Stephanas, "the first-
fruits of Achaia," "that ye also be in subjection unto such,
and to every one that helpeth in the work and laboreth"
(I Cor. 16: 15, 16). That, from its very terms, excludes
Stephanas from any exclusive and peculiar authority. His
was simply a free leadership in Christian good works. It
will be well to bear this passage in mind as attention will
again be called to it in connection with the rise of the theory
of apostolical succession.
The most striking thing regarding the Corinthian church
is the atmosphere of Christian enthusiasm. All the activi
ties of the church are the direct result of the inspiration of
the Spirit (I Cor. 12: 1-31. Compare Rom. 12: 3-8), all
are "gifts." "God hath set some in the church, first apostles,
secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts
of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues" (I Cor.
12: 28). Some of these may well have been conceived as
permanent. Paul undoubtedly so regarded his apostolate,
which nevertheless he viewed as charismatic (Gal. 1:1);
but others might be possessed at one time and not at
another, and many in the church might be vehicles of these
endowments (I Cor. 14: 26-33). In the presence of this
guidance of the Spirit, the need of the soberer and more
prosaic local officers did not make itself immediately felt.
This condition was in no sense peculiar to the Corinthian
church (Acts 13: 1-3; Rom. 12: 3-8; Eph. 4: 7-1 1; I Thes.
5: 19-21)-
Among these gifts of the Spirit there stand out pre
eminently in the Pauline list, apostles, prophets and teach
ers. The prime duty of the apostle was the founding and
supervision of churches. The usage of the title was not at
first strictly confined to the eleven faithful chosen by Christ,
with the addition of Paul. Barnabas was so styled (Acts
14: 14). Silvanus and Timothy also were apparently so
designated (I Thes. 2:6). Andronicus and Junias were so
IS

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
named by Paul (Rom. 16: 7). As late as the time of the
"Didache" travelling missionaries bore the name apostle
(Ch. n). Usage, of course, applied the title chiefly to the
eleven and to Paul. It was early felt that witness to the
resurrection was an essential (Acts 1: 22; I Cor. 9:1). Yet
in the first generation many who never claimed the title
apostle were witnesses of the resurrection (I Cor. 15: 6). A
further criterion developed. The apostle must have been
specially called by Christ to his work. That claim Paul's
opponents denied to him, and his utmost endeavor was to
assert its verity (Gal. 1:152: 8; II Cor. n: 5; Rom. 1: 1).
The successful vindication of that contention necessarily
tended to limit the designation to the eleven and Paul.
Clement of Rome, writing between 93 and 97, confines the
title to the narrower group (Ch. 42). In that sense the
apostles could have no successors. Their call had very
widely, by the close of the first century, come to be re
garded as a unique vocation by Christ for a special work.
Surviving primitive custom, as exemplified in the "Didache,"
could still speak of travelling missionaries as apostles, but
the more usual designation of those who proclaimed the
Gospel without an immediate designation by Christ was
"evangelist" (Acts 21: 8; Eph. 4: 11; II Tim. 4: 5).
Paul's second and third classifications of bearers of pre
eminent gifts of the Spirit are those of prophets and teach
ers (I Cor. 12: 28). Just what the difference between the
two may have been it is impossible to say. The conjecture
may be hazarded that the prophet was considered more the
vehicle of revelation (I Cor. 14: 29-31), and the teacher
more the instructor in already known truth or Gospel story.
However that may have been, both classes were charismatic
men, both were, like the apostles, those "which spake unto
you the word of God" (Heb. 13: 7), and the authority of
both was the inspiration of the Spirit. They might wander
from congregation to congregation or they might settle in
the community. They received the financial support of the
16

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
congregation in which they served (Didache, 13). What
was the witness to the prophet that his message was from
God is probably a mystery of consciousness that it is im
possible wholly to fathom. Yet, if we may judge by the
experience of Ignatius (110-117), it was an intense con
viction of the truth that he uttered. Ignatius's message
differed in no respect from his habitual teaching; but it was
impressed on him with burning earnestness. "I cried out,
when I was among you; I spoke with a loud voice, with
God's own voice ... it was the preaching of the Spirit"
(Philadelphians, 7). To reject the Spirit speaking through
these messengers was the unpardonable sin (Didache, n).
The work last cited is of great importance as revealing the
decline of this sense of direct divine guidance which burns
so brightly in the Pauline churches, and the abuse of these
claims to inspiration by the unworthy. The "Didache" does
indeed present a picture so unlike the traditional portrait of
the church of the sub-apostolic age that dogmatists have
occasionally tried to discredit it by suggestions that it might
represent the practices of some obscure or even heretical
sect. This condemnation is wholly without warrant. What
the "Didache" does is to present the survival of very early
conditions in some rural eastern communities. The picture
bears the traits of the Pauline churches, yet much altered.
Apostles, prophets and teachers still speak the word of
God, — of course apostles in the stricter sense are not
meant, — but the church has had much sorrowful experience
with fraudulent claimants to spiritual gifts. Their claims
are still recognized, if genuine; but the faults must be
guarded against (Ch. 11). The test here established is
that which the Master had proclaimed: "By their fruits ye
shall know them" (Mat. 7: 16). "Not every one that
speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet, but only if he have the
ways of the Lord" (Didache, 11). It is interesting to note
that prophets survived in the great and then strongly organ
ized Church of Rome well into the first half of the second
17

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
century, and that there the same test of their genuineness
was applied (Hermas, Vis. 2:4; Man. n). To the writer
of "First John" a test to distinguish true from false proph
ecy seemed also a necessity; but he found it in orthodoxy of
doctrine (4: 1-6).
It is evident that by the dawn of the second century the
older Pauline conditions were passing rapidly away. Char
ismatic gifts, though not denied, had become largely dis
credited. Apostles, prophets and teachers belonged to a
state of development that was becoming more and more
antiquated, even if the title teacher was to survive in rural
Egypt till far into the third century (Eusebius, "Church
History," 7: 24).
Side by side with this development of apostles, prophets
and teachers in the Pauline churches we witness the devel
opment, apparently from much humbler beginnings, of a
different order of functions, the exercisers of which were
ultimately to become officers of overshadowing importance.
The early Pauline churches were democracies, though democ
racies led by spirit-filled men. Paul called on the congrega
tion at Corinth as a whole to exercise discipline on the
unworthy (I Cor. 5: 3-5; II Cor. 2:5-11). Paul urged his
churches to make free-will collections for the poor in Jeru
salem; but left it absolutely to the congregation to choose
who should bear the gift (I Cor. 16: 3, 4). These acts can
hardly have taken place without leadership. Many inter
esting questions arise which our sources do not permit us to
answer. Who called and led the disciplinary meeting?
Who collected and cared for the money? Who entertained
travelling missionaries? Who looked after the poor and the
ill? Who led at the Lord's Supper, at least when the apostle
was absent? Regarding the matter last mentioned the
"Didache" would make it apparent that in its time the
Lord's Supper was often in charge of the prophets (Ch. 10).
For the early Pauline churches our sources are silent. It
may have been the prophets and teachers who did these
18

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
things ; but they were not always present or always inspired.
Their primary duty was to speak the word of God.
Rather the beginnings, and the relatively humble begin
nings, of such local ministrations as those just described, are
to be seen in a group of services which Paul describes as
"helps, governments" (I Cor. 12: 28), or are implied in his
exhortation, "he that ruleth [let him do it] with diligence"
(Rom. 12: 8). Paul could urge the Thessalonians: "to
know them that labor among you and are over you in the
Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in
love for their work's sake (I Thes. 5: 12, 13). The thought
is wholly parallel to the commendation of the house of
Stephanas who have "set themselves to minister unto the
saints, that ye also be in subjection unto such, and to every
one that helpeth in the work and laboreth" (I Cor. 16: 15,
16). These are not officers. They are charismatic men.
They are the gift of the Spirit (I Cor. 12 : 28) ; but they are
also men whom the congregation could trust for leadership
in "ministering unto the saints" in multitudinous local needs.
Then too, it is obvious that another leadership would grow
up in the course of a few years. When first planted the
members of the congregation would doubtless be of about
the same brevity of Christian experience. A few years must
have made a great change. There would be now those in
the congregation older in years, and, what is more impor
tant, older in Christian experience. This note of respect
appears when Paul writes: "Salute Andronicus and Junias,
my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among
the apostles, who also have been in Christ before me" (Rom.
16: 7). We have thus speedily a group of elders command
ing high respect, and in many instances those, also, who
"have set themselves to minister unto the saints." It will be
recalled that the house of Stephanas was "the firstfruits of
Achaia" (I Cor. 16:15). It may be that the rise of "elders"
(irpeo-^vrepoi), on Gentile soil was an imitation of Jewish
practice or of Palestinian usage; but the explanation just
19

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
suggested seems quite as probable. It explains why the
term elder is lacking in the earlier Pauline epistles, and
why it is to be found near the close of his life and in the
literature of the generation after his death (e.g. Acts 20: 17;
I Pet. 5: 1-5; James 5: 14). These Gentile elders may well
have been at first in no respect officers, but they grew speed
ily into the position of official influence in the affairs of the
local congregation which the passages just cited imply.
There was also a similar growth towards official status in
the exercisers of the "helps" and "governments." In one of
Paul's latest letters, addressing one of his oldest missionary
churches, the Philippians, he speaks of "the bishops and
deacons" (Phil. 1:1). It may well be that these names
are not yet descriptive of office, but of functions, "those who
oversee and those who serve." The two classifications well
characterize the duties of "helps" and "governments"; but
the trend towards their consolidation into an official status
is obvious. There are those now who with some considerable
regularity, if not indeed with permanence, "oversee" and
"serve." The same growth is seen, with an amalgamation
of the functions of elder and overseer, in one of Paul's
largest churches, that of Ephesus. For his farewell exhorta
tion he summons the "elders" of the church to Miletus and
addresses them as "bishops" (Acts 20: 17, 28). Their desig
nation is charismatic, "the Holy Ghost hath made you bish
ops (overseers)"; but though still charismatic it is an endue-
ment which gives them a special position in the church which
they are to feed. Dischargers of functions are crystallizing
into officers.
Thirty years after Paul's martyrdom, that which in Paul's
last days is still in the gristle, has become firm and definite.
A quarrel had arisen in the Corinthian church which in
Paul's time had been marked by divisions (I Cor. 1: 10-13;
3: 3-4). Certain "appointed presbyters" had been "dis
placed," who had "offered the gifts of the bishop's office un-
blamably and holily" (I Clem. 44: 54). The Church of
20

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
Rome sent a letter of protest and entreaty written in the
name of the whole congregation, some time between 93 and
97. Though bearing no name save that of the Roman
church, its author was unquestionably Clement. Clement
has in high measure the Roman sense of order and regular
ity. Though prophets undoubtedly still continued in the
Roman church, as Hermas makes evident some years later,
and may possibly be indicated by Clement under the desig
nation "rulers" (Ch. 1); his interest is in the presbyter-
bishops, for he uses the terms apparently interchangeably.
With them he mentions the deacons (Ch. 42). To him they
are fully officers. They offer the "gifts." It could be wished
that these ministrations were more fully defined, but the
term would appear to include the service of prayer, the
Eucharist, and the financial offerings of the congregation.
They may have taught, but nothing is said of teaching.
That function may have been exercised by the still existing
prophets and teachers (Hermas, Vis. 2:4; 3: 5). By the
time of Clement the process has been completed by which
those who exercised "helps" and "governments," who "over
saw" and who "served" have become fully permanent
officers. Yet this was not the most significant development. Not
only were presbyter-bishops and deacons officers, Clement,
first of Christian writers, presents the doctrine of a succes
sion of apostolical institution in which they stand. His
statement is as follows (Ch. 42, 44):
The apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord
Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. So
then Christ is from God, and the apostles are from Christ.
Both therefore came of the will of God in the appointed
order. Having therefore received a charge, and having been
fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance
of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the glad tidings
that the Kingdom of God should come. So preaching every-
21

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
where in country and town they appointed their firstfruits,
when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and
deacons unto them that should believe.
And our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that
there would be strife over the name of the bishop's office.
For this cause therefore, having received complete fore
knowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and after
wards they provided a continuance [law?], that if these
should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to
their ministration. Those therefore who were appointed by
them, or afterwards by other men of repute with the consent
of the whole church . . . these men we consider to be
unjustly thrust out from their ministration.
Nothing could be clearer than Clement's theory of suc
cession. The bishops and deacons of his day were in office
as the successors of those originally appointed by the
apostles themselves. It will be noted, however, that he
does not say that they were successors to the apostles.
They are in offices founded by the apostles. But fortu
nately Clement himself has given us a clue to test the
historical accuracy of his conviction. He was thoroughly
familiar with Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (see Ch.
37, 47, 49). He tells us that the apostles appointed their
"firstfruits" as bishops and deacons. He is writing to the
Corinthians. That is the very description which Paul had
used of the house of Stephanas in Corinth in exhorting to
"subjection unto such and to every one that helpeth in the
work and laboreth" (I Cor. 16: 15, 16). Paul had not ap
pointed Stephanas to anything. His household had been
charismatic bearers of "helps" and "governments" when
Paul wrote. Such exercisers of "helps" and "governments"
had become bishops and deacons. Their office was now
definite but their charismatic origin was now well-nigh
forgotten. To Clement it doubtless seemed that the "first-
fruits of Achaia" were appointed to offices identical with
those which had developed out of the services then com-
22

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
mended in them. Furthermore, both at Rome and at
Corinth, men like Clement doubtless remembered, or had
heard of, a whole series of men, the spiritual antecedents of
the existing bishops and deacons, who made an unofficial
succession of service back to the "helps" and "governments"
of Stephanas's day. The development had been a gradual
one, but in claiming an apostolical succession, Clement was
claiming too much. With the confident assertion of apos
tolical succession Clement had laid a corner stone of later
episcopal authority.
Clement regarded the bishops and deacons of his age as
in office by appointment by apostles or "other men of
repute with the consent of the whole church." Just what
this "consent" involved the sources do not permit a judg
ment; but any share in what was originally a charismatic
enduement indicates a very considerable modification of
primitive conditions. While Rome and Corinth might
believe the succession of bishops and deacons traceable
from apostolic times, that was not the conviction in other
parts of the church. As we shall speedily have occasion to
see Ignatius, himself, undoubtedly monarchical bishop of
the great church of Antioch, writing to the churches of Asia
Minor as late as 110-117, had no thought of an apostolical
succession. In the "Didache" it is the unreliability of the
prophets and teachers, and the necessity of providing for
orderly worship and government in their absence that is the
cause impelling to the appointment of bishops and deacons
(Ch. 15).
Appoint for yourselves therefore bishops and deacons
worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of
money, and true and approved; for unto you they also per
form the service of the prophets and teachers. Therefore
despise them not; for they are your honorable men along
with the prophets and teachers.
While the prophets can still lead in worship in the words
with which they are inspired, a simple liturgy is offered in
23

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
the "Didache" for the use of these less gifted bishops.
There is no thought in their case of charismatic enduement.
The apostolic age is of the past, but there is no conception
of an apostolical succession. The choice of these bishops
and deacons is simply by the church. It is evident that
the development was not everywhere uniform.
In Clement's letter to the Corinthians from which quota
tion has been made, the presbyter-bishops are spoken of in
the plural. The plural is also used of bishops in the
"Didache." Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, written
between no and 117, enters quite fully into the require
ments for local officers, emphasizing the necessity of high
character, their duties of care of souls, and of provision for
widows and orphans (Ch. 5, 6). He speaks only of pres
byters and deacons. It is incredible that Polycarp would
not have described similarly the duties of a monarchical
bishop had there been one in the church of Philippi.
Ignatius, writing contemporaneously to the Romans, has
no allusion to any monarchical bishop there. Hermas
though described by the Muratorian Canon, about 190,
as having written when his brother Pius was bishop of
Rome, shows no trace in his work, which was composed
between 115 and 140, of any monarchical bishop at Rome,
and speaks expressly of "the elders that preside over the
church" (Vis. 2:4). Indeed, Rome does not seem to have
had a monarchical bishop till Anicetus (about 154-167).
Lightfoot's contention that the names enumerated in the
traditional list of Roman bishops (Irenaeus, "Against
Heresies," 3:3) were from the beginning those of "bishops
in the sense of monarchical rulers of the Roman church."
("Apostolic Fathers. S. Clement of Rome," London, 1890,
1: 201-341, see 340) has been destructively answered by
Harnack ("Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur,"
Leipzig, 1897, 2d Part, Vol. 1: 144-202). There is no
reason to doubt that the persons named before Anicetus were
historical characters, were influential in the Roman church,
24

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
and were of its presbyter-bishops; but, in view of the testi
mony of Clement and Hermas they were not monarchical
bishops. It is plain therefore that till into the second cen
tury the older presidency of a group of presbyter-bishops,
the origin of which has been traced to its informal be
ginnings near the close of Paul's life, persisted in Rome,
Greece and Macedonia, and in the eastern region where the
"Didache" was written.
A further stage in the development described is revealed
in the Pastoral Epistles. These purport to be Pauline.
They are not from Paul's pen as a whole, though fragments
of brief Pauline notes may be imbedded in them, — more
probably in "Second Timothy" than in "First Timothy" or
"Titus." As a whole, their linguistic peculiarities show
marked unlikeness to Paul's unquestionable letters. Their
doctrinal outlooks show serious modifications of Paul's
familiar emphases; and the rising heresies encountered in
them were later in manifestation than Paul's time. They
must have been composed before 110-117, since they are
quoted in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians. A probable
supposition would therefore assign them to the last decade
of the first century or the first of the second century.
The Pastorals represent Timothy and Titus charged by
Paul, as his representatives, with the duty of maintaining
sound doctrine and repressing heresies in the church, with
preserving good order and procuring officers of high char
acter. It is Titus's charge to "appoint elders (presbyters)
in every city" of Crete (1: 5). The character of bishops
and deacons is fully described (I Tim. 3: 1-13; Titus
1: 6-9). The "office of a bishop" is one that can be sought
(I Tim. 3: 1). It is not primarily therefore charismatic;
though there is in Timothy a "gift" "given thee by prophesy,
with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery" (I Tim.
4: 14). That, or a similar, "gift of God" is in Timothy
"through the laying on of my [Paul's] hands" (II Tim.
1:6). The bishop is spoken of throughout in the singular,
25

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
presbyters usually in the plural. This consideration would
point toward the monarchical episcopate; but, on the other
hand, the order of thought in Titus i: 5-9, unless there is
interpolation here, would seem to imply that bishops and
presbyters (elders) are identical. It is therefore difficult
to say whether the Pastorals recognize a twofold or a
threefold distinction in office. In one important respect
they exhibit a change from the situation presented by
Clement. Nothing was said by him of teaching by pres
byter-bishops. In the Pastorals teaching is a prime duty of
the bishop or presbyter (I Tim. 3: 2; 5: 17; Titus 1:9).
It is plain that the functions of the prophets and teachers
of Pauline days have been largely absorbed by the more
permanent local officers. It could be said of the bishops
and presbyters of the Pastorals as it was of the bishops
and deacons of the "Didache," "for unto you they also per
form the service of the prophets and teachers." The reasons
for these changes are not far to seek. Not only were
prophets and teachers becoming discredited through the
unworthy, as the "Didache" shows; but if the prime duty
of leaders of the church was now conceived to be to guard
"the sound doctrine" (I Tim. 1: 10), that could be much
more effectually done through permanent regular officials
than through the uncontrollable and uncertain utterances
of prophets. From that point of view, the prophets were
a danger rather than a help.
All these developments which are obscurely indicated in
the Pastorals are abundantly plain in the letters of Ignatius
of Antioch written, between no and 117, to the churches of
western Asia Minor and of Rome and to Polycarp. Ignatius
was himself the monarchical bishop of Antioch, though he
styled himself "the bishop from Syria" (Rom. 2) — a desig
nation which may contain the germ of that sense of the
importance of the bishops of the capital cities of the empire
from which the metropolitan office was to develop. There
were also monarchical bishops in the towns about Antioch
26

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
(Philadelphians, io). In writing to Rome Ignatius men
tions no bishop. A sufficient reason is to be seen in the fact
that there was then no monarchical bishop in Rome. Each
of the five churches of Asia Minor, however, to which he
wrote had a monarchical bishop, presbyters and deacons.
The threefold order was in full existence. He mentions the
bishops of Ephesus, Magriesia, Tralles and Smyrna by
name. There is no hint in Ignatius's letter that he regarded
the monarchical episcopate as a new institution, though in
two of these churches it did not command the undisputed
authority that he wished for it (Trallians, 3 ; Philadelphians,
1, 7). When the institution originated in these churches
there is at present no evidence; but in the case of the oldest
church of this group in Asia Minor, that of Ephesus, it is
plain that it must have come into being between the time,
some half century or more before, when Paul had summoned
the presbyter-bishops of Ephesus to Miletus (Acts 20: 17,
28) and that at which Ignatius wrote.
An orderly church, to Ignatius's thinking, is one "zealous
to do all things in godly concord, the bishop presiding after
the likeness of God and the presbyters after the likeness of
the council of the apostles, with the deacons also" (Mag-
nesians, 6; see also Trallians, 3). The deacons are subject
to the bishop and presbyters (Magnesians, 2 ) . The bishop
was so distinctly the superior that even though young, as in
Magnesia, the presbyters his elders "have not taken ad
vantage of his outwardly youthful estate, but give place to
him as to one prudent in God" (Magnesians, 3). Ignatius
had no thought whatever of an apostolical succession in this
episcopate. The conviction of the Roman Clement was
outside his interest or knowledge. Ignatius entered into the
duties of bishops with some fullness. They should control
the services and the administration of the sacraments
(Smyrneans, 8). They care for souls, they are protectors of
widows and slaves, their consent to marriage should be
sought, they call the church together to act (Polycarp 1-7).
27

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Regarding the specific duties of presbyters and deacons
little can be gathered from Ignatius.
Even more strongly than in the Pastorals, with Ignatius
the peril of the time is heresy. That heresy is more defi
nitely defined than in the Pastorals. It was chiefly docetic
(Trallians, 9-1 1; Smyrneans, 1, 5). It led to separations
from the congregation, neglect of care for the needy and
rejection of the Lord's Supper (Ephesians, 5 ; Smyrneans, 6) .
That evil heresy Ignatius held with intensity of conviction
can only be combated by unity, and that unity can be pre
served only by closest harmony with the monarchical bishop.
That is the burden of all his message.
Shun (Smyrneans, 8) divisions as the beginning of evils.
Do you all follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the
Father, and the presbytery as the apostles; and to the
deacons pay respect, as to God's commandment. Let no
man do aught of things pertaining to the church apart from
the bishop. Let that be held a valid eucharist which is under
the bishop or one to whom he shall have committed it.
Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people
be; even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [cath
olic] church. It is not lawful apart from the bishop either to
baptize or to hold a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall
approve, this is well-pleasing also to God; that everything
which ye do may be sure and valid.
So much more imposing a figure did the bishop of sub
sequent centuries become, that it is sometimes difficult to
grasp the simplicity and naturalness of Ignatius's advice.
His bishop is no diocesan ruler, but the head of a single
congregation, or at most of the few scattered groups meet
ing for safety in private houses in a single city. He re
sembles the pastor of a modern congregation. And what
better provision for avoiding divisions could Ignatius give
than the exhortation: submit to your pastor, hold to him,
let his leadership be supreme in all the worship and life of
the congregation. 28

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
How this change came about by which the name bishop
became the title of only one of the leaders of the congrega
tion, that is, how the monarchical bishopric was established,
the absence of evidence makes it impossible to say in detail.
The suggestion of Hatch that the prominence of the mon
archical bishop had its origin in superintendency of the
financial administration and poor relief of the congregation
("The Organization of the early Christian Churches," 5th
ed. London, 1895) is now generally regarded as a partial
and one-sided interpretation. The bishop did, indeed, have
the care of the needy as a duty. (Ignatius to Polycarp, 4) .
By the middle of the second century he received and adminis
tered the gifts by which he "takes care of all who are in
need" (Justin Martyr, "Apology," 67). Doubtless some
one had prime care of these funds from the time when they
were first collected, that is from the founding of Christian
congregations. But to seek the origin of monarchical epis
copacy primarily in such financial administration is to over
look other and more important contributing causes.
A yet more significant root of the monarchical bishopric
would appear to be leadership in public worship and
especially in presidency at the Eucharist. Unfortunately
the evidence here is scanty. We know much of the abuses
of the Lord's Supper in the Corinthian church, but nothing
of the method of its administration (I Cor. 11: 17-34). The
"Didache" gives a liturgy for the use of the presbyter-
bishops when no prophets are present (Ch. 9, 10). Accord
ing to Clement the presbyter-bishops offer "the gifts of the
bishop's office" (Ch. 44). It is evident that leadership
in such service cannot long permanently be divided. The
presbyter-bishops may have exercised some sort of rotation,
but fitness would be sure to be manifested more in one than
another, and leadership in these services would tend more
and more to be regarded as belonging to one. In the time
of Justin Martyr (153) the Lord's Supper was administered
in Rome by "the president of the brethren" (Apology, 65).
29

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
That the "president of the brethren" was fully a monarchical
bishop at Rome at this time is doubtful, or that he was
always the same person is not made certain by the phrase;
but the tendency to confine ordinary leadership to the most
fit, and to regard the leader as the most eminent man in the
church, must have been overwhelming. Leadership in
worship would associate with itself leadership in all other
interests of the church.
Furthermore when the presbyter-bishops existed there can
never have been full actual equality. No committee can act
without some sort of headship, however informal. Among
the presbyter-bishops one or another would stand out as
specially gifted, as the man of authority, and would tend to
gather the reins of leadership into his hands, or have leader
ship forced upon him. Such a man may Clement of Rome
well have been. His ability was such that he wrote the
remonstrance with Corinth in the name of the Roman com
munion. As Harnack has well said, "it is impossible to say
when the monarchical bishopric began" ("Entstehung und
Entwickelung der Kirchen Verfassung," Leipzig, 1910, p.
72). Its completion was when the title bishop, with the
powers involved, became the property of one only, and was
no longer shared with several; but the actual leadership of
which this was the completion must have been manifested
among the presbyter-bishops in varying degrees of fullness
long before. By the beginning of the second century the
older Pauline order was largely gone. The apostles, now
restricted, save in remote communions like those for which
the "Didache" was written, to the eleven and Paul, were
no more. The evangelists were also practically a memory.
(Ill John may record one of the instances of waning evan
gelistic superintendence in contest with rising local author
ity; perhaps a dawning monarchical episcopate.) The
prophets still continued, but were to be increasingly dis
credited till rejected by the great church in its struggle with
Montanism, the teachers, though to last longer (Hermas,
30

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
Vis. 3:5), were now becoming less significant and were to
survive longest in remote rural districts as in Egypt (ante
p. 18). The duties and powers and endowments of these
earlier leaders were passing rapidly, in popular estimate, to
the permanent local officers of the church, especially to the
rising monarchical episcopate. The Christian message was
conceived now, not as a divinely inspired utterance through
charismatic men, but as a deposit of truth to be guarded and
handed down. "The things which thou hast heard from me
among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful
men, who shall be able to teach others also" (II Tim. 2:2).
This deposit was a "faith which was once for all delivered
unto the saints" (Jude, 3).
All these tendencies were emphasized by the gigantic
struggle with Gnosticism that threatened the very life of the
church from about 145 for more than half a century. Many
of the Gnostics were men of great abilities. Probably the
historic "Catholic" church of the latter half of the second
century contained no equals in mental power to set over
against the chiefest of the Gnostics. That the historic
church won in this struggle was due to its firmer organiza
tion and its emphasis on the continuity of its tradition. In
this contest creed and canon were formed, but, above all,
victory was achieved by the assertion that the Catholic
church was the successor of original Christianity in doctrine,
worship and organization. (A most interesting study of
how the struggling church of the Gnostic crisis sought to
emphasize successions is that of Cuthbert H. Turner, en
titled "Apostolic Succession," in the volume edited by the
late H. B. Swete, "Essays on the early History of the Church
and the Ministry," London, 1918.) Under these influences
the monarchical episcopate rapidly extended. It was emi
nently adapted to meet the rising heresy. By 155, Rome
and Corinth had monarchical bishops; by the close of the
century they had become the universal rule. The position
of the bishop was immensely strengthened by the general
3i

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
acceptance of the conviction, first clearly formulated by
Clement of Rome, at a time when Rome had as yet no
monarchical bishop (ante, p. 22), that the bishop's office
was of apostolic foundation and had been maintained since
the first appointments by the apostles in continuous suc
cession. Of this completed development Irenaeus is the earliest
witness. His great treatise, "Against Heresies," was written
in opposition to Gnosticism about 185. His argument
against Gnosticism runs as follows (3: 1-3):
The apostles had "perfect knowledge" of the Gospel, and
that Gospel has been put in writing by the apostles or their
immediate disciples.
Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews
in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching
at Rome and laying the foundations of the church. After
their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter,
did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached
by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a
book the Gospel preached by him [i.e. by Paul]. After
wards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned
upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his
residence at Ephesus in Asia.
The teachings which are enshrined in these Gospels are
those Irenaeus declared, which every Christian must accept,
and are the refutation of Gnosticism.
It is beside the present purpose to inquire into the historic
accuracy of Irenaeus's statements. His conviction is clear
that the church possessed the absolute teaching of the apos
tles, — now wholly used in the sense of the original apostles
and Paul, — in its four familiar Gospels.
Irenaeus knew, however, that he had thus far met only
one side of the Gnostic contention. The Gnostics alleged
"that the truth was not delivered by means of written docu
ments, but viva voce: wherefore also Paul declared, 'But
we speak wisdom among those that are perfect, but not the
32

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
wisdom of this world' " (I Cor. 2:6). That viva voce teach
ing the Gnostics claimed to represent. Irenaeus had a more
difficult task to answer here, but he accomplished it skill
fully: We are in a position to reckon up those who were by the
apostles instituted bishops in the churches, and the succes
sion of these men to our own times; those who neither
taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics]
rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries,
which they were in the habit of imparting to the "perfect"
apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered
them especially to those to whom they were also committing
the churches themselves. For they were desirous that these
men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom
also they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering
up their own place of government to these men.
Irenaeus then referred the inquirer to the "tradition de
rived from the apostles, of the very great, very ancient, and
universally known church founded and organized at Rome
by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul" ; and then
presented a list of Roman bishops extending from the apos
tles to his own day. (For the nature of this list see ante, p.
24.) This succession, Irenaeus asserted, guaranteed the
continuity of apostolic teaching; and "it is not necessary to
seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from
the church; since the apostles, like a rich man in a bank,
lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to
the truth" (3: 4).
Under the circumstances of the time, with doctrine still
in formulation and the canon still in process of formation, it
is difficult to see what more effective answer Irenaeus could
have made to Gnostic claims. Yet what enormous assump
tions were wrapped up in this answer. Does succession in
office really guarantee unchanging teaching? And, if the
development has at all been accurately traced, were the
monarchical bishops of the churches of Irenaeus's day really
33

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
instituted by the apostles, appointed as their successors and
intrusted with the apostolic government? Irenaeus's answer
shows, however, that the second-century conception of the
organization of the church had developed in the form which
was to characterize the greater part of the church to the
present day. Not that there was anything static here. The
minor orders, the metropolitans and the popes were yet in the
future; but the story has been followed far enough for the
purposes of the present study.
Certain conclusions emerge from this examination of
Christian institutional development which have their bear
ings on the problem of church unity. No period in this
changing situation can be pointed out as a model of what
Christian institutions should be. There was here no decline
from a primal purity. There was a growth, an adaptation to
environment and new conditions. The primitive charismatic
democracy had to yield to the discrediting of prophecy, and
the claims of order and effective organization. The unwork
able nature of the collegiate presbyter-bishops, especially
under the needs of the conduct of worship and in the face
of rising heresy, had to give way to monarchical episcopacy.
That in turn was compelled in the great Gnostic crisis of the
second century to emphasize its guardianship of historic
Christianity. Many of its emphases were undoubtedly with
out full historic justification; but it may well be doubted
whether anything less rigid or less solidly built would have
carried the church through its struggles with the heathen
forces of the Empire without and its own divisions, heresies
and ferment within.
If, moreover, there is in this development no place where
one can say that Christian institutions had received a final
form, may not the same be true of the whole history of the
church? Is not its institutional life one of adaptation to
environment — an environment that changes from age to
age. Much that the past has brought forth is of exceeding
worth. It is not lightly to be rejected. But the vital thing
34

DEVELOPMENT OF CHURCH OFFICERS
in any epoch is that divine life which forever seeks expres
sion through the church and should forever clothe itself in
forms fitted to the needs of the particular present age in
which the church militant bears its testimony and does its
work.

35

II
VITAL PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH
DEVELOPMENT
AT a meeting of a number of university men, who
/ \ were discussing church unity, one of them said that
_/_ \_ the tenets held among the different churches are
logically so incompatible that they never can be reconciled.
An eminent biologist who was present took up the discus
sion and held that biologically these differences were capa
ble of assimilation. Life is a good digester of incompatibles.
From a biological point of view the problem of the organic
unity of the churches is no more to be regarded as impossible
than has been the organization of the higher forms of life
through the processes of natural selection.
The naturalist is accustomed to inquire how all things
from their beginnings have grown to be what they have
become. He would regard as vain disputations ecclesiasti
cal controversies or dogmatic conclusions which show the
absence of any vital conception of religious development.
Far too little use of the biologist's way of thinking has been
made in religious literature; and especially the lack of this
mental habit is to be deplored in controversial discussions of
the polities and doctrines of the different churches. Too
generally either no idea whatsoever of natural development
has entered into the minds of the disputants, or, if some idea
of the development of the Church and its institutions has
been entertained, it has been a logical rather than a vital
conception of the historical development of Christianity.
Some of the generation now passing received in their
36

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
earlier ministry fresh inspiration and guidance into pastures
new from the writings of that early prophet of social salva
tion and larger Christian comprehension, Frederick Denison
Maurice. Somewhere in his writings he used this significant
phrase, "great reconciling principles." Biological analogies
may reveal to us vital reconciling principles in the realm of
spiritual life and growth.
One should beware indeed of transferring directly the laws
of one order of being to another; as, for example, of identi
fying the laws of mechanics with the modes of reaction in
the psychological order, and still more in the realm of spir
itual activities. This was the mistake of the otherwise stimu
lating and clarifying book of Henry Drummond on "Nat
ural Law in the Spiritual World." The analogy between the
two, when carried to the point of their identification, results
in subjection of the higher order to the lower, to the con
fusion of both. But an illuminating analogy may be dis
cerned between certain formative principles in different
spheres of creative action. Such principles, which may be
recognized as characteristic modes of behavior in one period
or domain of natural history, serve to bring out more clearly
the higher laws or modes of procedure in the development
of personal life and human society.
The end of the war opens before all the churches the pos
sibility of one of the greater works of faith which the Lord
promised His disciples they should do in His Name. Organ
ized Christianity is to be reorganized. Modern historical
studies have furnished much valuable material for Church
reconstruction. Christianity may not survive on polemical
divinity. The religious world waits for the reconciliation of
all Christians. Our churches generally are ready to move
forward and to move together for the common cause of
Christianity. It is the aim, accordingly, of this essay to inquire whether
in the light of modern biological knowledge we may come
to some better understanding of vital principles of the or-
37

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ganic unity and development of the Church. For our plans
of reunion, if they are to prove fruitful, must proceed from
true principles of life and growth.
We must start, then, in such inquiry from the present
accepted view of the method of natural evolution. The
view formerly accepted is designated by the word preforma
tion. The chick was supposed to exist in an invisible minia
ture in the egg. Evolution, as the word was then used, was
supposed to be the unfolding of what was involved in the
embryo. This was, broadly speaking, the theory which was
prevalent among naturalists in the seventeenth and earlier
part of the eighteenth centuries. In the year 1759 a young
physician published as a thesis for a doctor's degree an
attack upon the then current theory of preformation (Wolff,
"Theoria Generationis"). He endeavored to show that the
organism does not exist already formed in the egg, but that
on the contrary all development proceeds through a process
of new formation — the germ exists to be developed in its
relation to its environment. But this conception, as so often
happens with new ideas, was not favorably received by the
orthodox science of his day, and for a long time was neg
lected. Since Darwin it has become in modified forms the
accepted teaching of biological science. The word evolution
is no longer used in its former and literal sense as simply the
bringing out of what was previously formed in organic be
ginnings — the rudimentary structure corresponding, part
by part, with what was completed in the adult form. Mod
ern biology has to account for the life and growth of an
organism in adaptation to its environment. The environ
ment is a factor in the formation. Moreover, we know more
concerning the beginnings of different organs of the body.
Recent experiments, it is true, seem to show that in some
species at least there are certain limited areas of the em
bryo from which definite structural developments may pro
ceed. But, with some possible modifications, the evolution
of organic forms and functions may be described by the
38

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
word predetermination rather than by the word preforma
tion. How the primary differentiation of the germ-plasm
is effected, or what determinants may be detected or sup
posed to exist in the cell, — all this constitutes the problem
at the root of modem theories of heredity. Without going,
however, into particulars, it is sufficient for our immediate
analogical purpose to note that evolution (epigenesis) is to
be conceived as a progressive development, in which organs
are formed and additional functions are acquired in a process
of continuous action and reaction between the organism and
its environment, and in which new varieties may appear and
specific forms become determined.
Keeping, then, in mind such general principles of organic
evolution,, we proceed to inquire whether certain analogous
principles are to be discerned in the development of organ
ized Christianity. What may be regarded as vitally essen
tial principles in the continuity and growth of the Church
of Christ in the world? We would seek for such principles
in the formation and continuity of its order, its faith, and
its worship. We would not miss any signs of their working
in the varieties of Christian life and associations. We must
recognize in these the possibility of degenerate forms, which
lose survival virtue, and also of abnormal growths which may
be capable of reabsorption in the further organic growth.
But the vitalizing energies, the formative and adaptive prin
ciples of the living Church, are the main things to be known.
Nor will inquiries concerning these be matter merely of
ecclesiastical or doctrinal concern; primarily and now-a-
days most urgently they are practical issues; for our plans
for the reunion of the churches and our endeavors for the
utmost efficiency of the Church will succeed or fail; they
shall usher in another age in fulfilment of former ages of
the Reformation, or they shall be brought to naught; as they
find and follow, or shall miss and wander from the way of
the Spirit, the method of the Life of the Christ in the life
39

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
of humanity. That is one of progressive teaching and
practice. The absence of any guiding idea of development is notice
able in much of the dogmatic divinity of former days, and
too often also in existing ecclesiastical discussions. Church
partisans have been accustomed to appeal to their received
views of the origins of Christian institutions, to their tra
ditions, to the early fathers or to the Reformers, to the
decrees of the undivided Church or to later historical con
fessions; but with little or no regard for modern critical and
scientific methods of historical research.
One may search in vain through the numerous controver
sial writings of the last three hundred years, until quite re
cently, for evidences of a truly genetic conception of the
origins and development of the faith and order of the
Church. Generally in the ecclesiastical discussions of former
times proof-texts, taken from the Scriptures, were the weap
ons of their controversies, citations from the church fathers
their supports; and political interests in the control of the
Church by the State were the field of their hostilities.
I have gone from the biological laboratory of Yale Uni
versity to a room in the library in which is preserved a large
collection of the controversial literature of the Puritan
times — books and pamphlets once burning with zeal but
now gathered in peace together on its shelves. The change
from the researches of the laboratory to that room in the
library, in which the spirits of champions and martyred wit
nesses to their faith seemed still to be present, was like
entering into another world. In it I could still feel the spirit
of men breathing the air of a new day of freedom, who had
waxed valiant in fight and followed without faltering the
light that went before them, each on his own separate and
narrow way. In the other I was peering into the mystery
of the beginnings of things, searching the ways in which
from infinitesimal origins the world has become what now it
appears to be, wondering, as I left, what is the last secret,
40

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
the diviner meaning of it all. The language of those two
rooms was not the same. The ways of thinking in them
were not opposed, for they had never met. The whole atmos
phere was changed — that past world of undoubting beliefs,
this modern world of questioning knowledge. But we are
coming to understand that there are not, after all, two
worlds of science and divinity, for the two are hemispheres
of the one full orb of truth.
In recent times some idea of development, more or less
scientific, has been received in historical and religious
thought. A notable contribution to it was made in New
man's famous essay on the "Development of the Christian
Doctrine." It was begun while he was about to pass from
his life at Oxford, and it was finished just after he had
joined the Roman Catholic Church. One may well wonder
whether Newman would ever have taken that step, if Oxford
at that time could have given him a modern course of study
in general biology. With more foresight than was usual
then, he had discerned the signs of the coming conflict be
tween modern science and a Church that deemed itself
safely intrenched within its ancient dogmas. He had early
cherished the desire to write a new apologetic for religion.
More pertinently, perhaps, the question may be raised
whether Newman would not have written his "Essay on
Development" along quite different lines, and have led the
Oxford movement beyond captivity to Rome out to a larger
catholicity, if besides his familiarity with the church fathers,
his earlier education could have imparted to him a good
biological habit of mind in his religious thinking. More
truly still, it may be said that, deeper and more potential
even than his historical studies or logical habits, in the
spiritual psychology of Newman's distinctive personality,
were to be found the motives that predetermined his career;
which first caused him to be hailed as the morning star of
a new dawn for the Anglican Church; as later his lack of
scientific appreciation of the method of creative evolution
4i

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
may have contributed to his final resolution, which caused
even the splendor of his spiritual genius to be submerged in
his intellectual submission to Rome.
The work, which Newman relinquished, of writing a new
apologetic of religion, can be accomplished only out in the
open field of knowledge, where winds from all quarters blow,
and in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom. Nevertheless,
it was not the least of Newman's contributions to religious
thought that he brought the whole case of Christian dogmas
to the test of an idea of development. A criticism, there
fore, from a more scientific point of view, may be very much
to the purpose in helping present discussions go down to the
vital principles of Church unity. For, as we may clearly dis
cern them, we may wisely and hopefully tmst the ultimate
results of our working with and through them.
i. BIOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF NEWMAN'S
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
THE title of his Essay is, "The Development of Chris
tian Doctrine." It is to be noted that he did not pro
pose to himself the wider inquiry concerning the development
of Christian life and doctrine in the life of the world. He
defines his thesis as follows:
That the increase and expansion of the Christian Creed
and Ritual, and the variations which have attended the
process in the case of individual writers and Churches, are
the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which
has taken possession of the intellect and heart and has any
wide or extended dominion: that, from the nature of the
human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension
and perfection of great ideas; and that the highest and most
wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once
for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all
at once by the recipient, but, as being received and trans
mitted by minds not inspired and through media which were
42

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
human, have required only the longer time and deeper
thought for their full elucidation. This may be called the
"Theory of Development of Doctrine" (p. 29).
His only thought is of the "full comprehension and per
fection of great ideas" ; the development is not of the ideas,
but in our comprehension and perfection of them. The
growth is in their "elucidation." That is brought to light
which lies hidden in them. Newman starts accordingly with
the conception of preformed ideas involved in the original
content of the Christian dogma. There is no further reve
lation of the mind of Christ in and through the mind of his
Church, no epigenesis of Christian doctrine in the experience
of his disciples, no increasing knowledge of God through
historic processes of the divine education of his children. It
puts a dogmatic limitation upon the teaching Spirit of Christ
in history to conceive of it as showing solely the things of
Christ in any past age. There are things of Christ coming,
and already come, in our own time, to be shown by the
Spirit that shall lead the disciples into all truth. Jesus'
commission to his disciples was not merely that they should
make a bank deposit of his teaching for future ages to draw
the interest of it; He was to be with them always. At no
definite point of time, in no determinate form of belief, may
it be said that the teaching of the Spirit of the Christ came
to a pause, or that in the creeds of the ancient Church man's
pursuit of truth has overtaken divine revelation. When has
the God of history ceased to call individual men to be
prophets of his word, or upon the mountain tops to be mes
sengers of the dawn of another of the days of the Son of
man on the earth? Has the common life of His people
never been stirred to the depths by the Spirit that bloweth
where it listeth? Is not nature itself disclosing now long
hidden secrets of His wisdom and power? Or is the old
faith ever conserved except in its becoming the new faith?
Newman proceeds to give seven notes by which a true
development may be distinguished from corruptions. A
43

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
cursory review of these notes may be a useful preliminary to
the present inquiry concerning the really vital principles of
Church development.
The first note is Preservation of the Type. This is a
true biological principle; nature remains true to the type.
The determinants in each specific form also remain con
stant. But Newman's applications of this note to the his
toric development of the Church betray no conception of
what the biologists call phylogenesis, the larger evolution of
successive types and species through the capacity of life for
variation and by means of many factors, known and as yet
unknown, as a result of which the rich manifoldness of exist
ing forms of life has been attained in the unity of the organic
world. Hence Newman's first note in its application to
Christian doctrine is true as far as it goes, but it does not
go far enough. It ignores the whole field of comparative
religion. How Christianity grew up among the religions of
the world, and in its historical environment from age to
age has become what it is in its present varieties of reli
gious experience and faith, — all this broader survey and
comparative evaluation of different forms of existing Chris
tian life and teaching does not enter into his discussion of
the development of doctrine. His illustrations under this
note are taken from differences in individual cases and trace
the genealogy of a particular line of descent. By this note
the discussion enters indeed a right way, but no sooner is
it entered than its direction is lost. It is noticeable that
like so many others in current religious discussions, Newman
takes examples from the growth of animal or vegetable
nature only "as illustrations of the general subject" (p. 41) ;
but illustrations are not analogies; or, as the biologists
would say, homologies are not analogies. God's ways of
self-realization or manifestation through the natural and the
spiritual realms are not merely illustrative, they are parallel
and harmonious ways of the one divine order of the whole
creation. We need to go deeper than the illustration on the
44

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
surface of things to find the fundamental principles, the
great laws of being and life, upon which, as on the everlast
ing rock, we may build our immortal loves and hopes.
The second note is Continuity of Principles. Newman
reaches broader ground in this part of his essay. The con
tinuity of natural evolution is an accepted postulate of mod
ern science. Some of Newman's words concerning the rela
tions of principles and dogmas may be analogous to the
relations which biologists might draw between the laws and
the forms of natural evolution. But here again he follows his
misleading idea of the development of Christian faiths from
some preformed deposit of original dogma; for he draws his
illustrations of this note from the relations of Euclid's defini
tions to the axioms and postulates of mathematics (p. 179) .*
The third note is the Power of Assimilation. We need to
call attention to this note only because in Newman's use
of it he had an advantage at least over those leaders of the
Oxford movement whom he left behind him when he went
over to Rome. For one reason of the continued survival of
the Roman Catholic Church, while empires have fallen and
knowledge has increased, has been just this power of receiv
ing and assimilating elements of vitality from its changing
environment — the paradox of its power of changing that it
may continue unchanged. Because it possesses a living
authority, which it deems infallible, the Roman Church exer
cises a power of binding or loosing, of granting dispensations
from its own restrictions, and rendering new definitions of
its own doctrines. So Newman has said: "The Church of
Rome can consult expediency more freely than other bodies,
as trusting to her living tradition, and is sometimes thought
* See later statement of Newman's position in reply to Peronne
and virtual agreement with him that "the whole depositum," as, for
instance, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, might be
regarded as making explicit what is implicit in the creed. (Life of
Newman, by Wilfred Ward, Vol. 1, 184 sq.)
45

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
to disregard principle and scruple when she is but dispensing
with forms." But the extreme adherents of the Oxford
movement have not this freedom of a living authority; they
are bound within the limits of their own claim of being
Catholic; the fathers are always with them, and their final
appeal is to the decrees of the ancient Councils. Newman
submitted to a living Infallibility; the Tractarians remained
under the rule of the dead man's hand.
For our present purpose it is not necessary to follow
Newman through his remaining notes and their application
to the history of the Catholic Church. His Essay rendered
this service, that it brought the idea of development of some
kind to the forefront in the discussion of ecclesiastical issues.
The conclusion also to which he came as he passed over to
Rome, may lead one to beware of any idea of the develop
ment of the Church which does not stand the test of biologi
cal analogies. We may be forewarned, for example, against
theories of the continuity of the Church, such as led New
man, with perhaps logical consistency but vital misunder
standing, to jump to the conclusion that "a developing
authority is to be expected. ... a provision in the Dispen
sation of putting a seal of authority on the Development."
On the contrary the "developing authority," the principle
of development, is from within, not from without; and the
seal of it is the vital certainty that it survives and continues
to grow.
Newman himself had a deeper insight, he struck a truer
note, when late in life, in 1872, he wrote to the principal of
Aberdeen University: "What a mystery it is in this day
that there should be so much which draws religious minds
together, and so much that separates them from each
other. . . . and when shall the better day come? ... It
seems to me the first step to any chance of unity amid our
divisions is for religious minds, one and all, to live upon the
Gospels" (Ward, op. cit., v., ii., p. 393).
46

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
2. ANALOGIES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
FROM BIOLOGY
PASSING from these more general statements concern
ing vital principles of development, we may turn to
some special biological analogies which may throw light
upon the problems of organic Church unity which are now
pressing themselves upon all our churches.
Without entering into technical details or minor distinc
tions which biologists might make, the following tendencies
may be said to be recognizable in the evolution of organic
forms and functions; and similar principles are to be recog
nized in the development of the Church.
i. There is a certain conservative tendency, or prin
ciple of conservation, in the organism as a whole.
This seems to be inherent in the germ-plasm of the
organic unit. It is observable not only in its reactions
against incompatible elements or hurtful influences from
without, but also in its development as a check or balance,
whenever variation, if carried too far in some direction,
might threaten the existence of the species. It is some
times spoken of as variation around a mean.
This principle of self-conservation as an organic whole
was a vital principle in the growth of the early Church. It
began to be as one body. It was not an association bound
together by an external interest, or merely for co-operative
work, it was a fellowship in one and the same Life.
The Christian Church was wholly there, and Jesus Him
self was present in it, when He gave to the company of His
disciples the Last Supper. The Church as one whole was
in that upper room — the membership, its offices, its powers,
its great commission, all its organic powers in the society
of those disciples with Jesus. The chosen body of His dis
ciples were themselves both members and Apostles of His
Church. As such He gave to them authority. No one of
that first communion of disciples was to be greatest among
47

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
them. To the Church thus constituted and to those who
were gathered with the disciples, the Lord appeared and
gave visible signs and assurance of His presence always with
them. In that first communion of Christ, the organs and
manifold gifts and functions of the Church that was to take
form and grow, were undeveloped, not definitely separated,
but potentially existing. Not many days after, we read, they
went up into the upper chamber, where they were abiding,
and these all with one accord continued stedfastly in prayer,
with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His
brethren. Soon those fellow-servants of whom the Church
was first constituted without distinction of presbyters, bish
ops, or deacons, but with all power and authority, were
called to go their separate ways, never probably to meet
all together in the same room again. In many different
places each disciple was to gather around him believers, and
each communion so formed presented in that particular
place the whole Apostolic Church. From so simple poten
tiality the age-long development of the Church of Christ
began. Each primitive church had to be locally adapted to its
immediate surroundings in order that it might survive and
grow. But the churches in every place had a common tra
dition and a common consciousness of belonging to the same
Christian society, while in distant places and at different
times they had various usages. They were vitalized by
the same Spirit, but possessed divers gifts and spake in
many tongues. The conserving influence, as they began to
multiply among all the saints of the dispersion was the
common consciousness of the one people of God. Every
communion of Christians was one of the fellowship of all
Christians. Such at least in the simplicity of its earliest
growth was the Apostolic Church. "All things are yours,"
so the great Apostle of reconciliation could preach to those
first Christian communities. So might the Apostolic recog
nition of unity amid diversity be given to the churches in
48

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
every place today, if St. Paul were travelling, not from
Jerusalem to Macedonia or to Rome only, but among our
churches of every name the whole world round. For what
has been lost among us is not the indwelling life, which is
the perpetual presence of the Christ with His disciples, but
our common and compelling consciousness of it, and hence
our failures to make it visible to the world. The real denial
of catholicity is for any part of the church to claim itself
to be the whole Church. What is not conservative, but de
structive of unity is for any existing church to assert its
order or rule to be the only form and authority for the mani
fold diversities of faith and order which the centuries have
developed. Nor is catholicity to be sought and found in a
vain endeavor to put existing non-conformity back into some
previously existing uniformity. If we could imagine the
churches in all their manifoldness to be put back as one
body into the undivided Church of the first five centuries,
that would not make one Catholic Church; for it would
leave outside the manifold and rich fruits of the life of the
Church in all the seasons since. To compel us to return
into the earlier forms would be schismatic toward the later
manifoldness. Moreover, it should be observed in passing that it is not
strictly true to speak of churches that may have sprung up
spontaneously from the common ground as though they
were merely voluntary associations. Birds of the air may
have scattered seeds of the truth, which the providence of
God may have watered, and by their fruits they are to be
judged. They have grown on the common inheritance; they
are constituted of the same elementary units; they bear
the marks of their Christian descent, and in their member
ship are believers baptized with the same baptism of all the
children of the universal Church. In their will to be, there
may be something of the will of God that needs to be done.
Moreover, if they give increasing evidence of their survival-
value, there must be in them some virtue fit to live, to be
49

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
taken up into and conserved in the growth and fruitions of
the whole Church.
At this point, however, the question may be well urged
whether there is no principle in accordance with which hurt
ful outgrowths may be cut off, or superfluous multiplications
plucked up? Rome claims a self-perpetuating authority to
do this; has Protestantism no vital principles of self -judg
ment? We turn for an answer to further biological analogies.
2. The second vital principle to be noticed in this con
nection is the restorative tendency of organic life.
This capacity of self-repairing, and restoration of lost
parts, seems to be a general property of the lower organisms.
It diminishes as the organization becomes more highly dif
ferentiated, but within limits it may be said to be one of
the general properties of organized matter. Life is naturally
selective of its own forms best fitted to survive. Abnormal
forms are not usually self-perpetuating. Superfluous appen
dices in time become aborted. There seems to be a natural
tendency to restore the vital proportions between the several
parts and functions which are to be kept balanced and co
operative for the welfare of the whole organism. This
method of divine grace in the spiritual realm is no less
effective than the law of selection in nature. We may trust
providence through human history to work as a balancing
and normative energy, keeping the proportions of faith.
We may greatly err if we undertake too hastily or violently
to do this work in the Church ourselves. Nature might
teach us a lesson of tolerance for a while even with freaks.
Christian associations have sometimes sprung up overnight
as the following of some eccentric preacher, flourished for
their brief day, and been forgotten, whatever measure of
truth there may have been in their strange doctrine being
reabsorbed in the growth of the Church. Heresies have
often been taken up after a while into the larger and richer
orthodoxy. How often it would have been better to trust
the healing virtue of the Spirit than the drastic remedies of
So

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
the ecclesiastics. A wise conservatism may find it safe to
trust what one of old called the Holy Spirit of Education.
3. Besides this, there is observable in the organic world
a certain substitutional capacity.
When one organ or part has been injured or lost, its work
may be taken up by some other part of the organism. Or a
new part may be grown in its place. There are instances in
which from a different area of an embryo a new growth has
been formed to take the place of one that had been de
stroyed.* Now this same natural principle of substitutional function
ing is inherent in the plastic nature, so to speak, of the
living Church. It has special significance in relation to the
offices and orders of the Church. Such orders, whether
they be few or many in their later differentiations, have
their origin in the original undivided and essential nature
of the Christian society itself. Hence they have correlative,
and if need be, substitutional power of functioning for the
well-being of the Church as one organic whole. To regard
them as not so constituted would be to make God the author
of confusion, abandoning in the spiritual order the method
which has been pursued in the order of nature, and its per
fecting. The history of the Christian Church shows that
the Spirit of the Lord does not work in the realm of grace
at cross-purposes with the Spirit of God in the natural crea
tion. But it would be too great a digression for us to follow
out the evidences of this statement. It may be observed
in passing that in the earlier Apostolic Church the divers
gifts of the Spirit were not at once clearly differentiated. In
the sub-apostolic days the functions and orders of the min
istry are not so distinctly marked that historians may not
differ widely in their definition. Only gradually did the
*A striking example is the growth from an adjacent epithelial
cell of a new lens in place of one that had been destroyed in the
eye of the larva of a Titon. Many interesting experiments of this
kind have been made by biologists. Si

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
offices and duties of presbyters and bishops become de
limitated and canonically determined. To some extent they
have remained interchangeable, as, for example, it was held
by many divines of the English Church after the Reforma
tion that where bishops could not be had, orders conferred
by presbyters might be deemed to be valid.
It may be said that this gradual delimitation of orders
and offices, marking a more complex organization of the
Church, is a gain compensating the loss of simpler primitive
Christianity. However that may be, the original virtue of
developing and adapting its own orders remains, as it was
at first, in the Christian society itself. It resides in what
might be called the elementary plasm, the essential matter
and the formative energy of the Christian society. From
this primal and indestructible essence and virtue of the body
of the Church the injury or loss of one order may be sup
plied by the substitutional service of another; and still more
than this, should persecution or sudden destruction overtake
it, stripping it bare of all its official orders, and leaving
nothing but the undifferentiated company of believers, from
the Christian body itself there might be developed anew
whatever orders or ministries might be necessary that it may
survive and fulfil its calling in the world.
4. Resembling the character just noticed, but distin
guishable from it, is what has been called anticipatory sub
stitution. There are observed instances where a temporary use is
made of one organ until another, better fitted for the ser
vice needed, shall have been formed. Concerning this
anticipatory provision, Professor J. A. Thompson remarks:
"Of course, we require to know more about the way in which
the old-fashioned structure prepares the way for and stimu
lates the growth of the future substitute, but the general
idea of one organ leading on to another is suggestive" ("Sci
ence of Life," p. 137). This natural character of organic
52

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
evolution has special pertinency in the discussion of the
offices and orders of the Church.
A gift or office may be utilized beyond its original intent,
and thereby become the means of transition to a more spe
cific authority. Pastors have become missionary superin
tendents, presbyters have been made bishops, and the
bishop of a single communion has had in time a diocese
added unto him. All this, both in the early church and
later, is quite natural. It is going on in some denominations
before our eyes. In gifts of ministries which have proved
their value, and in orders which perhaps have been too
exclusively held by others, anticipations may possibly be
found of powers and administrations that may be effectively
combined and adapted in a corporate working-plan of the
churches. But such corporate federation might prove im
possible if any church should hold its own ecclesiastical
polity as though it were a bequest to be administered under
unalterable terms, which no living authority may change; if
the Church of the living God has been bound forever to the
dead past's hand, and is no longer as it was in the beginning
when the Spirit of Life was first breathed into it, and the
words of its Lord were the charter of its liberty.
The Lambeth article seems to anticipate some such freer
use of the historic episcopate as "locally adapted in the
methods of its administration to the varying needs of the
nations and the peoples called of God into the Unity of His
Church." 5. A fifth note of creative evolution is that change of
direction is the advancement of life.
When one form of organization has been carried as far
as it can go, nature, seizing on some possible variation,
enters on a better way of life. Nature has often changed
her models; one type has followed another, as when brute
force would dominate the earth, nature invented the first
flying machines, and gave to the singing birds the freedom
of the sky. If we were to attribute intelligence to nature,
S3

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
this irrepressible impulse to find new ways for life when
old ways were ended, might be called the optimism of
nature.* A similar capacity — a spiritually inventive character —
should not fail in the Church. A new age demands new
ways. The word reconstruction is hardly adequate to answer
the call now of the world upon the Church. New types
fitted to the demands of Christianity for all peoples are to
be developed. First, perhaps, on what we used to call for
eign missionary fields other types of organized Christianity
may spring up. Shall our home churches be ready to recog
nize their validity? Shall the Protestant churches have
attained sufficient inter-communion among themselves to
fit them for Christian inter-communion on foreign fields?

3. VITAL VALUES OF VARIOUS SYMBOLS OF
FAITH AND WORSHIP
WE come back now to the remark of the biologist with
which this essay began, that doctrines logically in
compatible may be reconciled in life. Various creeds served
on the theologian's table may be assimilated in the growth of
a healthy Christian character. Indeed, a vigorous Christian
man may convert into his living and working faith, without
conscious inward disturbance, doctrines that might prove
incompatible in any system of theology. But the vital
values of his beliefs according to his daily needs are the
things that really matter to him.
One may well put for himself the creeds of Christendom
to this unusual but profitable test; let him take up, for exam
ple, Schaff's volumes which contain the "Creeds of Christen
dom," and turning the pages, glance through them one
* For a detailed explanation of biological principles mentioned
above, and instances illustrating them, the reader may be referred
to my book on "Through Science to Faith," ch. x.
54

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
after another with an eye single to this only: How much
may I find in each with which I can agree? How much
running through them all is there to which my religious
experience responds? Martin Luther once said, "Some
times I believe, sometimes I do not believe." How much in
these creeds do I find in which at different times I may feel
that I can believe? Forgetting who made them, or from
what age they may have come, how much in this harvest
from all fields may I find to be good for me?
One reading thus the creeds of the ages past may be able
to say as he closes the books: This is the line of my spirit
ual descent, these are my heritage of faith. There they are,
all bound together in these volumes; in their agreements
and their contradictions, by their partial truths and their
passing errors witnessing to man's increasing ,yet ever un
finished knowledge of God's truth which passeth knowledge.
One may subscribe to them, as he would to the Bible, as a
whole; not that every book in it is inerrant, or without
mistake in every verse, but as the revelation of God through
the history of the chosen people, and its fulfilment in the
Word made flesh and of all that Jesus began both to do and
to teach.
The creeds of the first five centuries do not compass the
extent of the faith of the Church. The Catholic faith is
the faith of all the ages until now. It is bom, and born
anew from the continuous religious life of the people of
God. The experienced truth of the whole Church from the
beginning is the Catholic faith.
Keeping such conception of the catholicity of faith in
mind, we may more assuredly find a way through the creedal
perplexities which beset us from all sides in our approach
towards Church unity. For the Catholic Church must needs
comprehend the teachings of the Spirit of Truth within the
whole household of faith even to this present time. For
when has the Spirit of Truth said to the fathers or to us
of His work of teaching divinity, — it is finished? The
55

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
unity of the Catholic faith is not therefore to be sought for
either, on the one hand, by reducing the creeds of Christen
dom to a minimum, or, on the other hand, by making any
single confession, ancient or modern, the rule of faith for
all believers, or any one church the only true church. Chil-
lingworth, the author of the "Religion of Protestants," was
of a better mind, when he subscribed to the articles of the
Church as articles of unity, and because he believed the
truth in them was more than their errors. Creeds are
symbols of the faith, not iron boxes in which to keep a
"deposit" of the faith. They serve as guideposts along the
way rather than as gates closing in our particular posses
sion. The successive confessions of the churches are not
merely scriptures of private denominational interpretation,
but witnesses from different ages and in many tongues of
the riches of the glory of Christ's inheritance in the saints.*
It remains for us to apply this test of vital values to the
problems of unity arising from differences concerning the
worship and sacraments of the Church.
While the Lord's Supper is the very center and hearth of
the whole household of faith, around it have gathered the
most irreconcilable differences of the churches. Reunion,
therefore, must go to the very core of the disunion. So long
as non-communion between churches is visible, real unity is
invisible. And belief in the oneness of the invisible Church
does not atone for the sinful estate of visible disunity.
Agreements to work together outside the churches leave
the Christ to be found walking the streets among men, but
not seen in the midst of His own disciples. External federa
tion in working together, however desirable, may hide but
does not atone for not living together in the one family and
Church of God. The visibility of the home life, not of co-
* Contrast in this respect Harnack's distillation of Christianity in
his volume, "What is Christianity?" with Loisy's comprehension of
its historical contents in his reply to Harnack, "The Gospel and the
Church." 56

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
workers only, in the same field, — that is the real unity of
the Church. These still existing refusals of Christians to
worship and commune together might prove a fatal peril
to all organized Christianity, if they should be tolerated as
necessary, and endeavors to remove denominational fences
or high, churchly walls of separation be regarded as im
practicable. But, if now, after this war, we have not faith
strong enough to break through them, our epochal oppor
tunity will be lost, and the sinful separations become wider
and worse than before.
In this connection attention may be called to a fact which
Loisy has pointed out in the suggestive chapter on the
Catholic worship in his book, "The Gospel and the Church."
He notes that "in matters of worship the religious feeling
of the masses has always preceded the doctrinal definitions
of the Church as to the object of worship. The fact is full
of significance; it attests the law which demands a form of
worship suitable to all the conditions of existence and to
the character of the people that believes" (p. 238). "Chris
tianity had to find a ritual, or cease to exist. For this rea
son, it was from the first the most living worship that can be
imagined. Attempt merely to conceive those baptisms, with
the laying on of hands, and sensible manifestations of the
Divine Spirit; that breaking of bread, and the meal where
the very presence of the Master who had just left the earth
was felt; the songs, celebrating acts of grace, that burst
forth from the heart, the overflowing enthusiasm. . . .
Everything is living. . . . There is no speculation about the
token, no hint of physical efficacy of the sacrament in bap
tism, nor of transubstantiation in the Eucharist; but what
is said and believed goes almost beyond these theological
assertions" (p. 232 sq.). He traces the process in which the
sacramental system was naturally developed. "The entire
Christian worship developed around the supper of the Eu
charist. . . . Without any previously constructed scheme,
an institution was realized which surrounded human exist-
57

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ence with a divine atmosphere and is, without doubt, by the
intimate harmony of all its parts and the intensity of its
influence the most remarkable creation that has ever pro
ceeded from a living religion" (p. 349). "Regarded his
torically, the development shows a persevering effort on the
part of Christianity to penetrate with the spirit the whole
existence of man" (p. 250). This view of the natural de
velopment of the sacramental system, which is indicated in
these quotations, may have suggestive value as we would
find an open way of return to the inter-communion of all
believers. For the religious feelings of the people of God
are not to be corralled and confined within any one con
fessional fold. All psychological diversities should have rec
ognition in the presence of the Christ for all. At the Lord's
Supper, if anywhere in the world, the saying of Pascal
should be held true, "In Christ all contradictions are recon
ciled." Three typical examples of these varieties of Christian
experience must suffice for illustration:
The first is the commonly received view and correspond
ing feeling in the observance of the Lord's Supper in the
non-liturgical churches. It is regarded as a means of grace,
and at the Lord's table communicants find their most hal
lowed memories quickened, their sense of oneness still with
those who have been taken from their homes made more
real, and their faith strengthened, as they feel more deeply
the death of Christ for them, and His Life dwelling within
them. It is more to them than a mere memorial service
such as might be held elsewhere; the bread and the wine
are symbols of a present and abiding reality. So to hum
blest cottagers in some wayside chapel the Lord's Supper
has meant more in their religious feeling of comfort and
assurance of faith than could have been expressed in words
or confessed in written creed.
An example of the type at the other end of the range of
58

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
sacramental experience is furnished in the life of Newman,
whose views of the development of Catholic doctrine we
have been reviewing. This passage is taken from a letter
which he wrote to an intimate friend shortly after he had
received his first communion in the Catholic Church.
I am writing next room to the Chapel. It is such an
incomprehensible blessing to have Christ's bodily presence
in one's house, within one's walls, as swallows up all other
privileges and destroys, or should destroy, every pain. To
know that He is close by, — to be able again and again
through the day to go in to Him; and, be sure my dearest
W., when I am thus in His Presence you are not forgotten.
It is the place for intercession surely, where the Blessed
Sacrament is. Thus Abraham, our father, pleaded before
his hidden Lord and God in the valley. (Life of Newman,
J. Wilfred Ward, v. i, p. 118.)
To many Protestants these words might seem unreal, as
the doctrinal term, transubstantiation, to which Newman
assented, would be unintelligible. Many will look upon all
such uses of symbols as superstitions. It would be easier
for an outstanding Puritan to denounce them than it would
be for him to take pains to understand what they may have
meant to others who have Christ present to them in the
Sacrament. Hence have come divisions among us, — mis
understandings between opposite personal psychologies, and
withal mutual intolerance and the casting out of charity that
thinketh no evil.
But to Newman these were natural expressions of a real
religious experience. A mind so sensitive as his to the dif
ficulties of faith, and so persistently logical, could hardly
have rested in words that had to him no rational content.
Fortunately Newman has recalled some of his earlier mental
tendencies, running back to his boyhood, which may enable
us to enter into his later experience in his transition from
Oxford to Rome, and to conceive at least how in that
59

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Chapel next to his study he could find the presence of Christ
so indescribably real as he wrote that it was.
At Oxford, in his youth, he read Butler's Analogy, the
study of which he says was to him, as it has been to so
many others, an era in the history of his religious opinions.
What is unique, however, as a result of his study of it, he
tells us in these words:
If I may attempt to determine what I most gained from
it, lay in two points. . . . they are the underlying principles
of a great portion of my teaching. First, the very idea of an
analogy between the separate works of God leads to the
conclusion that the system which is of less importance is
economically or sacramentally connected with the more
momentous system, and of this conclusion the theory, to
which I was inclined as a boy, viz., the unreality of mate
rial phenomena, is an ultimate resolution. Secondly, But
ler's doctrine that Probability is the guide of life, led me,
at least under the teacher to which a few years later I was
introduced, to the question of the logical cogency of faith,
etc. ("Apologia pro sua Vita," p. io.)
Here we have disclosed the two psychological deter
minants — the sense of the unreality of the material, and
the mental demand for logical cogency — existing and run
ning along together through his life, and rendering his expe
rience in the Chapel and the study next to it, as he passed
from one to the other, an experience of religious life at once
real and indescribable.
To put the symbol in the place of the reality may be
superstitious or idolatrous. There is this peril whether one
identifies a formula of words with the truth, or offers adora
tion before a picture over an altar, or makes outward nature
itself the object of worship. But symbolism is the gift of
God to the imagination. Through the symbol one may draw
near the Reality. One may appreciate more truly how New
man with his rare penetrative and realistic power of the
spiritual imagination could discern in and through the sacra-
60

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
ment the personal presence of the Lord, if ever one has felt
as Newman felt in sacred places, or realized as he could, the
nearness of someone dearly loved, but now seen no more;
as these passages from Newman's letters show. He writes
thus of entering a beautiful church in Milan:
"And it is so calm . . . that it is always a rest to the
mind to enter it. Nothing moves there but the distant
glittering lamp which betokens the Presence of Our Undying
Life, hidden but ever working, though entered into His
rest." ...
It is really most wonderful to see the Divine Presence
looking out almost into the open streets from the vari
ous Churches, so that at St. Lawrence's we saw the people
take off their hats from the other side of the street as they
passed along. (Ward, op. cit, v. i, p. 139.)
This extract from a letter written after the death of his
sister Mary, whom he had dearly loved, may come closer
home to the inner life of many:
I never felt so intensely the transitory nature of this world
as when most delighted with these country scenes. . . .
Dear Mary seems embodied in every tree and hid behind
every hill. What a veil and curtain this world of sense isl
beautiful but still a veil. (Op. cit., p. 41.)
A third illustration comes nearer a common feeling and
understanding of believers. It is taken, however, not from
a Protestant but from a Roman Catholic source. A group
of Catholic priests in an appeal made to Pope Pius X, en
titled, "What We Want," — one of the earliest utterances of
the so-called Modernists, — expressed what the sacrament of
the Eucharist meant to them, in these words:
So again, to explain the Eucharist mystery, we cannot for
ourselves adopt the theory of Transubstantiation, unless no
one is to understand. But we shall say that the faithful
after the word of consecration, while with the senses of their
61

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
bodily life they will see only bread and wine, will yet with
the soul, by means of a super-phenomenal experience of
faith, in short, be in contact with the real and living Christ,
who, before He died, gathered his disciples to a fraternal
feast to communicate to them for the last time, the bread of
Eternal Life — will be in contact with the Christ suspended
upon the Cross, the Victim of justice and peace. ("An Open
Letter to Pius X," from a "Group of Priests," 191 7.)
The mediaeval scholastics, applying Aristotle to the teach
ings of Christ, elaborated the distinctions between matter
and form, accidents and substance, and crystallized their
reasonings in the word transubstantiation. But flowing
deeper and broadly through all this long history of theologi
cal Christianity was the Life of the Christ in the lives of
martyrs and saints and through the unceasing succession of
believers; and the movement and power of the world's expe
rience of Christ cannot be measured or stayed within the
limits of all the creeds, either of Roman Catholic or Protes
tant. The Christian consciousness of God in Christ tran
scends its expressions. No symbolism may be either too
rude or too rich for worshipful use; all created things are
signs and means for spiritual expression, — whether they be
things for the eye to see, or harmonious sounds for the ear
to hear, all are ours for spiritual uses. It would be for the
Church to despise the good gifts of God in nature to the
Spirit that is in man, should it refuse Him that speaketh in
divers ways through the symbolism of the world of sense and
sound. The one Church of the God of the living must be
both high and low and broad enough to comprehend all
worshipful psychologies. So Jesus Himself did as He went
about among men.
As we come out to the conclusion of this way of analogies
between the natural and the spiritual there rises before us a
clear and majestic vision of the Church of God. Behold the
consummate creation of the Spirit in human history! From
the elemental foundations of nature it has been upbuilt. Its
62

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
materials have been drawn from all peoples and times. Its
structural unity is the law of one and the selfsame Spirit.
Its Maker and Builder is God. The generations of men,
passing by, look up and confess, "We believe in the one
Holy Catholic Church."
The testimony of Jesus, said the angel of the Apocalypse,
is the Spirit of prophecy. The testimony of Jesus as wit
nessed in His life with His disciples, and through the expe
rience of the Christ which has continued through the ages
past even until now, is the Spirit of prophecy. From that
unbroken line we look forward until He comes.
The historian had true insight into the prophetic testi
mony of Jesus through the past, who, as he gathered up his
materials for his history of the Church, wrote these words:
"Only that which has at some time truly lived and thereby
become immortal by representing a ray of the Christian's
spirit, forms part of history, which is a history not of the
dead, but of the living." The history of that which has
been lived in Christ is the prophecy of the living Church
that is to be. Whatever else we may hold in our separations
to be essential for us to keep, may perish, the testimony of
Jesus in the religious life of His disciples shall live on and
on in the one Church of the past, the present and the here
after. Whatsoever is not of the testimony of Jesus shall
fail. Only His life in the churches is prophetic.
As the ways of the Lord alike through nature, through his
tory, and as He goes before His Church, are one way, so
likewise there is one law in all and over all — even the Law
of Love.
So Savonarola gave this testimony of Jesus, and had the
prophetic vision of the city and church of God which was
to come, when after his excommunication by Rome and
while awaiting the ascent of his spirit through the flames
of his martyrdom, he wrote this: "All theology, all canonical
and civil laws, all ecclesiastical ceremonies are ordained with
63

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
a view to charity by God." And he pronounced a new
anathema: "Therefore on him that giveth commands opposed
to charity, which is the plenitude of our law, let him be
anathema! The new commandment is love; and the Church
of God has only this one anathema: it is enough.

64

T

III
CONCERNING SCHISM
HERE has been a general agreement among divines
as to the sin of schism, but much diversity of
opinion as to who are the schismatics.
The canons of the Church of England of the year 1603
censured as authors of schism: "Whosoever shall hereafter
separate themselves from the communion of saints, as it is
approved by the Apostles' rules, in the Church of England,
and combine themselves together in a new brotherhood,
accounting the Christians who are comformable to the doc
trines, government, rites, and ceremonies of the Church of
England to be profane and unmeet for them to join with in
Christian communion, let them be excommunicated ipso
facto," etc.
The English reformers were compelled to regard schism
as an unnecessary separation from the Church, or otherwise
to admit that they themselves were in a state of schism from
Rome. This note of the necessity of separation runs uni
formly through their designation of schismatic separation.
Thus Bishop Bramhall, for example, denying that the
Church of England is in a state of schism, said:
"We do not separate ourselves from other churches (un
less they chase us away with their censures), but only from
their errors." He writes of the English reformers' separa
tion from the Roman Catholic Church that "they left it with
the same mind that one would leave his father's or his
brother's house, when it is infected with the plague, with
prayers for their recovery, and with desire to return again,
65

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
so soon as that may be done with safety." (Protestants'
Ordination Defended, Works, vol. v., p. 205.)
Irenaeus's view of schism as a want of charity:
Irenaeus described "them that make schisms, who are
empty of the love of God, and look to their own benefit
rather than to the union of the Church, who for any and
every reason will maim and mutilate and as far as in them
lies destroy the great and glorious Body of Christ; speaking
peace and working war; truly straining out the gnat and
swallowing the camel; seeing that no reformation they can
effect can be so great as is the harm of schism. . . . But
more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy,
excellent above all other charismata, is the especial gift of
charity." (Adv. Haer., iv., xxx., i.-xxiii., 8, as given by
Turner, "Early History of the Church," p. 126.)
St. Augustine's admonition:
And we act rightly who do not dare to repudiate God's
sacraments even when administered by heretics. For in all
points in which they think with us they are in communion
with us, and are only severed from us in those points in
which they dissent from us. . . . But whenever he (a sepa
ratist) desires to conduct himself as is customary in the
state of unity in which he himself received the lessons which
he seeks to follow, in these points he remains a member, and
is united to the corporate whole.
Numerous definitions of schism might be cited from the
writings of successive English prelates and divines, all very
much of the same tenor, this later one from the recent
Bishop of Oxford indicates sufficiently their general agree
ment: Schism is "a wilful self-withdrawal from the legitimate
succession of the Catholic Church ... the wilful causing of
a breach inside the Church." (I give this as quoted by Wil
son, op. cit., p. 200, from Dr. Gore's "Roman Catholic
Claims," p. 126.) 66

CONCERNING SCHISM
The following from Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Proph
esying" may illustrate the tone of the more moderate
Churchmanship :
As to particular churches they are bound to allow com
munion to all those that profess the same faith upon which
the Apostles did give communion. To make the way to
heaven straiter than God did make it, or to deny to com
municate with those whom God will vouchsafe to be united,
and to refuse our charity to those who have the same faith,
because they have not all our opinions, and believe not
everything necessary which we overvalue, is impious and
schismatical ; it infers tyranny on our part, and persuades
and tempts to uncharitableness and animosities on both.
The early Puritans and Nonconformists on their part
stoutly maintained that they were not schismatics. Numer
ous controversial pamphlets from all sides swarmed around
this question of schism. The convictions, as well as the
intense feeling prevailing among the dissidents, are shown in
many of these pamphlets, as, for example, this quotation
from one of them, entitled, "Separation, yet no Schism, or
Nonconformists no Schismatics," a sermon before the Lord
Mayor of London, 1675:
Peradventure you say we have broke off the Unity of the
National Church, which we ought to have preserved, I
answer we have but broke it by accident. . . . And be ye
but willing to receive them as ministers and members which
Christ receives and owns, and I dare say we shall have a
blessed peace.
Thus the Anglican divines, on the one hand, defended
themselves from the charge of schism by the Romanists,
and, on the other hand, they made the same charge against
the Nonconformists that they were schismatics. Each meas
ured out to the others the same measure which was meted to
them. What then shall be said? Were they all in a state
of schism, which in itself is a state of sin? The inquiry is
67

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
one that searches to the heart of it all Churchism, and every
denominationalism. Amid the bitter strife and confusion of tongues of Laud's
domination of the Church, there was privately circulated a
short essay on "Schism and Schismatics," by the "Ever
Memorable Mr. John Hales of Eton College." Many sen
tences from this essay are well worth quoting, such as these,
for example: "It is not the variety of opinions, but our per
verse wills, who think it meet that all should be conceited as
ourselves are, which hath so inconvenienced the church.
Were we not so ready to anathematize each other, we might
in heart be united, though in our tongues we were divided,
and that with singular profit to both sides." The responsi
bility for schisms in many cases he placed on both sides, as
he pithily said of the first great schism between the Eastern
and the Western Church, "I cannot but see that all the
world were schismatics." He defined schism as "an unnec
essary separation of Christians from that part of the visible
church of which they were once members." There may still
be some need, though it is happily a vanishing one, of re
calling this bit of his keen satire concerning heresy-hunting:
Heresy and schism are two theological scarecrows, which
they who uphold a party in religion use to fight away such
as making inquiry into it, are ready to oppose it if it appear
either erroneous or suspicious. For as Plutarch reports of
a painter who, having unskilfully painted a cock, chased
away all cocks and hens, so that the imperfection of his art
might not appear in comparison with nature; so men willing
for ends to admit of no fancy but their own, endeavor to
hinder an inquiry into it by way of comparison of somewhat
with it, peradventure truer, so that the deformity of their
own might not appear.
Rightly to define schism we should first distinguish clearly
between what organic unity in the material world is, and in
what sense it may be affirmed in the realm of personal
beings. Confusion in the discussion of Church unity results
68

CONCERNING SCHISM
from failure to regard this distinction, as is apt to be the
case when symbols are identified with realities, or metaphors
confused with facts. In the physical order organic unity is
primarily quantitative; in the personal order it is essentially
qualitative. There is analogy but not identity between the
two. Each has its own constitutive units, its forms of de
velopment, its lines of possible growth. In the former the
structural units are ultra-microscopic particles, specifically
determined in each organism, but probably of similar chemi
cal constitution in all living matter. The latter has likewise
its structural units, of originally similar psychological ele
ments, and capable also of many diversities in the develop
ment of personal characteristics. Human society is a visible
corporate unity so far as it belongs to the physical order
determined by material conditions, and blood relationships,
and traceable through lines of descent and variations accord
ing to the laws of organic heredity. But in so far as it is
a personal order, realized in a union of individuals in the
sphere of freedom, it is more than a physical unity; it takes
form in a body of laws and social institutions; it exists and
grows, and multiplies according to the nature of its own
spiritual being, and its history is the revelation of the inner
spirit of its life. Hence, while it is visible so far as the
external relations of its members are concerned, it is invisi
ble, but none the less real, so far as its organizing energy is
of the spirit spiritual.
Apply, then, such obvious distinctions to the conception
of the organic unity of the Church. That is at one and the
same time, so far as it exists, both a visible and an invisible
unity. In its full realization it must be both. It is an ob
vious grouping of a certain number of individuals at a par
ticular place and time, a definite collection of personal units.
They may at first be loosely bound together like a primitive
colony of cells. But the organizing principle is the invisible
spirit of its life which carries it on and out to more closely
interwoven and stable forms of social well-being. One form
69

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
may be outgrown, and another may give place to one more
complexly and highly organized. A separation from church
organizations which are no longer needed, or are corrupt, is
not of itself schismatic. The wholeness of the Church may
require it for its survival. But any breach of its outward
unity which at the same time violates its invisible unity, is
a wrong done to the Holy Spirit of its life. And that is sin
ful schism.
We may think of the visible church on earth, and the
invisible communion in the heavens. Or we may distin
guish between the true members of Christ's Church and those
who may be in it but not of it. There is, however, another
sense, which should be kept in mind, when we speak of the
visible and the invisible church. A particular church in its
place and time is a visible society, but it stands, or should
stand, there and then for the whole Church which is invisi
ble. It is the visible presentation in that place of the whole
Church. It loses its consciousness of being in and for the
whole Church at the peril of falling into the sin of schism of
itself from the one body of Christ. So far as from outward
necessity, and not its own will, it ceases to be to the world
without the evident symbol of the whole Church; so far as
through subjection to its own tradition or any pride in its
own name it fails to make evident to the world passing by
its door the invisible unity of the whole Church, in which
it has its being, it is in danger of falling into a state of
schism and is in peril of the judgment.
The supreme obligation of any part of the whole Church
not so to assert itself as to prevent any other part of the
Church from communion with the whole Church was clearly
perceived and stated by an eminent Anglican writer, Thorn-
dike, in his "Due Way of Composing Differences," as long
ago as 1660. Of the article, "The One Catholic Church,"
he writes:
For either it signifies nothing, or it signifies that God
70

CONCERNING SCHISM
hath founded one visible church; that is, that he hath obliged
all churches (and all Christians, of whom all churches con
sist) to hold visible communion with the whole church in the
visible offices of God's public service. And therefore I am
satisfied that the differences upon which we are divided can
not be settled upon any terms which any part of the whole
church shall have just cause to refuse as inconsistent with
the unity of the whole church. For in that case we must
needs become schismatics by settling ourselves upon such
laws, under which any church may refuse to communicate
with us, because it is bound to communicate with the whole
church. (Works, vol. v., p. 27. For this and other citations
from Thorndike, see Mason, op. cit., pp. 179-195.)
Recognizing this principle, the question recurs, who, then,
shall judge between us? How are we to judge ourselves?
A recent candid and earnest lecturer found himself much
embarrassed as he pursued this inquiry, How shall judgment
be rendered amid existing differences within the Church?
One after another he examines the several principles of
authority that are asserted, and finds them all wanting.
First, he finds that it is laying too much upon the Episco
pate to make it the determinative factor; the Roman auto
cratic authority also fails, as indeed there have been schisms
between contesting claimants for St. Peter's chair. The
Independent theory likewise is insufficient as that involves
the judgment of some single separated part over all other
parts of the body. The federative principle evades and does
not solve the vital problem because it neither begins nor
ends with any inherent principle of judgment of the whole
body by the life of the body as a whole. Or, as from our
biological point of view one would say, it is not an organism
judging in what its own life consists. The denominational
principle he puts aside as a confession of natural inability
to meet the moral responsibility of the oneness of the whole
Church. Finally this writer falls back upon the principle
of "brotherhood" within the Church. That, at least, it may
7i

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
be said, is an integrating element of the continuous life of
the Church*
Naturally this author fails to find an authority to judge
the churches, because such authority comes not from above,
nor from below, but is from within; it is the Spirit which
beareth witness of itself in and through the continuous life
of the Church. It is the unceasing self-judgment of the
Church by the Spirit which dwelleth within it. To this
single and searching test the chief of the Apostles brought
the primitive churches; If any man hath not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of his: he that is spiritual judgeth all
things, and he himself is judged of no man. Have we the
mind of Christ?
Penetrating to the dividing of soul and ecclesiastical
body, decisive for judging whether our own or another
communion is of the one true Church of Christ, may well
be for us all in this day of the Lord's searching of his people,
that first use of the word catholic in the sub-apostolic age,
by Ignatius, "Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church." It is God's will to sum up all things in Christ.
For one to subtract one's own things from the things of
others in Christ, is itself an act of schism. And by the same
sign to refuse to receive the things which others have found
in their vital experience to be of Christ, is schismatical.
For continuance in the sinful state of schism each Church
must stand at the judgment before its own Master and Lord.
The prophets of reconciliation from the past, of whom in
their times the world was not worthy, would rise up in
judgment against us, if we see not in this generation the
sign of the Son of man. The Apostles of reasonableness
from among our own ancestors would be witnesses against
us, if we find not now the way of peace for the Churches.
The hopes that have been disappointed, the efforts that have
failed, the prayers that wait to be answered from the ages
?Unity and Schism, T. A. Lacy. The above is a summary of his
chief points. 72

CONCERNING SCHISM
past, would be our greater condemnation, if now our free
churches can consent longer to remain divided, and we
should throw off upon some distant future our present re
sponsibility for continuance in the sinful state of schism.
The Puritans, who first established their churches for
themselves and their children in New England, in their
covenant and declaration of their faith at Cambridge in
1648, made in its preface this stirring appeal; not for their
immediate successors only may it avail, but, as a voice
indeed crying from the wilderness, may it be heard, calling
us all to repent of our divisions, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand!
It will be far from us so to attest the discipline of Christ, as
to detest the disciples of Christ; so to contend for the seam
less coat of Christ as to crucify the living members of
Christ; so to divide ourselves about Church communion, as
through breaches to open a wide gap for a deluge of Anti-
Christian and profane malignity to swallow up both Church
and State. What shall we say more? Is difference about
Church-order become an inlet for all disorders, in the king
dom? hath the Lord indeed left us to such hardness of heart,
that Church government shall become a snare to Zion (as
sometimes Moses was to Egypt, Ex. 10: 7), that we cannot
leave contesting and contending about it, till the kingdom
be destroyed? Did not the Lord Jesus, when He dedicated
His sufferings to His Church, and also unto His Father,
make it His earnest and only prayer for us in this world
that we all might be one in Him? And is it possible that
He (whom the Father heard always) should not have His
last and solemn prayer heard and granted? Or shall it be
granted for all the saints elsewhere, and not for the saints in
England? so that amongst them dissension shall grow even
about Church-union and communion?

73

IV
THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF
APPROACH*
MY topic is the historical approach to the problem
of Church unity. This historical method in our
day is somewhat different from what it used to
be. We have come to see that we can draw few reliable
conclusions from a certain kind of historical research into
the subject of Church origins and of Church authenticity.
The effort, namely, to discover what was the habit and prac
tice of the early and Apostolic Church as the basis for the
reunion of Christendom has proved to be more or less futile.
In the first place, that effort is sure to be inconclusive in its
results. That is not to impugn the value of historical study,
or to say that history is not a science; but as Canon Raw-
linson has remarked, "Inasmuch as 'history never repeats
itself,' historical conclusions, unlike those of the physical
sciences, are unverifiable. They can never be subjected to
the test of experiment, and consequently they can never be
'proved.' "f And since the evidence in the case is at its
best "fragmentary and disputable," there will always be a
"margin of ambiguity"; the facts in the case are "com
patible" with the view of those who assert the theory of an
?The revision of a paper read January 23, 1017, at a meeting of
the North American Committee in preparation for the World Con
ference of Faith and Order. Reprinted with permission from the
Constructive Quarterly, September, 1917.
f'The Principle of Authority" in the volume of "Foundations,"
p. 384. 74

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
original apostolic succession, but they do not "necessitate"
it (p. 383), and the effort to lay the foundation of any
theory of the Church on historical facts, and on these alone,
is sure to be inconclusive and to lead nowhere. Moreover,
even if it could be 'proved,' as we say, that this or that
theory of the Church or practice of Church government did
obtain in the Church of post-apostolic times, it would not
therefore follow that it is to be absolutely repeated in the
belief and practice of today. The Church treasures many
truths and follows many practices which admittedly are not
to be found in the earliest history of the Church. The idea
that the norm of the Church was determined in the first
hundred years of its life would seem to limit the operation of
the Holy Ghost.
But now there are two directions in which the historical
method may well be applied — indeed must be, if we are to
make any advance in our approach to the problem of Church
unity. The first of these is a careful review of certain
episodes in Church history, where the diverging currents of
Church life may be said to have their origin. And the
second of these is an historical explanation of the origin of
those religious ideas which have become incorporated in
the different communions of the Catholic Church and must
be reunited in the One, Holy, Catholic Church, the object
of our hopes and prayers. It is of these two uses of the
historical method that I wish briefly to speak.
One of those crucial epochs in the history of the Church,
in which divergent currents of Church life had their origin,
is surely that of the Reformation. And, to illustrate
partially our subject, let us look closely at one phase of the
Reformation period, namely the development of Church life
in England. We find ample materials here for a thoughtful
and promising application of the use of a true historical
inquiry. A careful review of this whole period in the light
of modern Church thought and feeling, in the expectation
that after that long and tragic story is reviewed some basis
75

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
will be discovered on which reunion may be achieved, must
have fmitful and permanent results. Was there ever a day
when such a task could be entered upon so hopefully as at
present? No one, I think, can read even casually the story of the
Puritan Secession, without being convinced of two things.
First, that the matters upon which men were divided were
more fundamental than the matter of vestments, the sign
of the Cross, the liberty to prophesy, the attitude at the
Communion, the ring at the marriage service, the wording
of the baptismal office. Had all these been conceded to the
Puritan conscience, the division would not have ended.
Doubtless Elizabeth and her advisers were right, when with
keen eye they saw that the rift ran deeper; that it involved
the more fundamental questions of faith and order. In
theology, the difference was between the Arminian and the
Calvinist; in form of worship, between the liturgist and the
non-liturgist; in polity, between Episcopacy and either
Presbyterianism or Independency. But now, serious as the
differences doubtless were, another fact is equally clear.
And it is this: that the failure to compose these differences
was caused, not by their undoubted seriousness, not because
these ideas were fundamentally incompatible and irrecon
cilable, but because of the temper of the time, the temper of
the men who engaged in these high disputes, and because of
the underlying assumptions which conditioned and con
trolled them. Looking back over these controversies with
an impartial eye, one can see opportunity after opportunity
thrown away, when, without detriment either to faith or
order, principles which seemed to be opposed might have
been comprehended in a higher unity, had there been that
irenic and catholic mind and temper in the Church, which
could have grasped both sides in this great issue and have
understood them to be but parts of a greater whole. Had
the Puritans but been less headstrong and radical in their
demands, and had the Churchmen but been broader and
76

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
more fraternal in their sympathies; had the Puritans been
less insistent on breaking with the historic past of the
Church, and had the Churchmen been more in touch with
the age they had helped to produce, there had never been
the great and lamentable failure to understand each other,
and to compose the great ideas for which they stood.
But it was an age of division. It was a time of no-quarter "
in the intellectual and spiritual world. Great ideas were
contending for the mastery. Religious feeling ran high.
The political life of a whole nation was bound up in the
religious struggle as had not been the case since the days of
the Holy Roman Empire. What one party denied or re
sented in another, it claimed and defended for itself. The
whole temper of the time made for division and not for
unity. Again: nothing is clearer than that the very idea of com
prehension, which is essential to unity with liberty, was :
foreign to the mind of the age in which the great Separation
took place. It was not an age of comprehension, it was an
age of uniformity. The word comprehension was indeed on
men's lips; but the only comprehension that men really
comprehended was that which involved the unconditional
surrender of their opponents. The idea of unity in diversity
was both intellectually and spiritually unintelligible to an
age which produced characters of the type of Elizabeth and
of Laud, of Lord Clarendon and Richard Baxter. These
people were not what in the language of the day could be
called good "mixers"; and ideas for which they stood did
not easily coalesce. Let one look beneath the surface of
any of the three great historic and futile attempts which
were made to hold together the Church, and one finds the
underlying assumption of a uniformity of either one kind
or another, the fatal rock on which they all split.
When King James at Hampton Court declared "that a
presbytery agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the
Devil," he put the case about as all men felt it. There were
77

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
arguments in plenty to prove that the Church of England
was divine in its origin and structure, and that the Puritan
Church was the same. But one reads the whole bitter story
without coming across a single argument to prove that both
were taught of the same Spirit and were therefore com
patible the one with the other. The whole intellectual
premise upon which these debates proceeded was that the
one must supplant the other; in vain does one look for the
accepted and controlling idea that the one might supplement
the other. The materials for unity were at hand. They are
to be found in the irenic declaration of Charles II when he
called the Savoy Conference, of which a conformist writer
said: "If ever a divine sentence was in the mouth of any
king and his mouth erred not in judgment, I verily believe
it was thus with our present majesty when he composed that
admirable declaration, which next to Holy Scripture I adore,
and think that the united judgment of the whole nation
cannot frame a better or more unexceptional expedient for
a firm and lasting concord of these distracted Churches."
They are to be found in the equally broad-minded attitude
of William of Orange in his opening address to the House
of Commons when he said: "I hope you will leave room for
, the admission of all Protestants that are willing and able to
serve. Their conjunction in my service will tend to the
better uniting you among yourselves and the strengthening
you against your common enemies." And even more ex
plicitly they are to be found in the proposals of Dr. Tillot-
son, afterward archbishop, to the convocation ordered by
William, which called for a review of the Liturgy; a leaving
indifferent of certain ceremonies enjoined in the Liturgy or
Canons; a recognition of the validity of the ordination of
the ministers of foreign reformed Churches; and an agree
ment that those who have been ordained only by presbyters
shall not be compelled to renounce their former ordinations.
The materials are not wanting; the history of the period
abounds in propositions within which the unity of the
78

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
Church might have been preserved. But no sooner do we
enter the Savoy Conference, or open the doors of the Convo
cation of 1689, than we find the possibility of peace and
unity outlawed at once, not for the want of materials, but
for want of the right temper, and the necessary underlying
intellectual and spiritual assumptions which alone could use
and shape those materials to the desired end.
To those who regard the visible unity of Christendom as
the greatest need of our common Christianity, it must be a
cause of ever recurring regret that the efforts made to pre
serve that unity in the English-speaking Church came to
nothing. But a review of that great historic failure has in
it this great element of hope, that it reveals the undoubted
fact that the reason for that failure lay not in the utter
incompatibility of the ideas for which the great contending
parties stood — but solely in the temper of the time and in
the character of its ruling ideas. Once let that fact be
gripped, and the future glows with promise. The temper of
that age is not the temper of ours. The ruling ideas of that
time are not the governing ideas of our own. What was
wanting then is present now. The clash of contending prin
ciples, the strife of opposing ideas, has given way to broader
ideas of peace and toleration. The fixed notion of uniform
ity has yielded to the more catholic idea of comprehension.
In a word, the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in which
a Church unity that does not at the same time deny liberty
can be understood and realized, is as present in our day as
it was absent in the day of the great Separation. Imagine a
Savoy Conference in the year of grace 191 7. In imagination
picture a second William of Orange appointing a Commis
sion having for its deep spiritual purpose the prayerful con
sideration of those questions which still divide the children
of a common spiritual ancestry. Such a Commission
would meet not in an age of division, but of unity. The
temper, the motion of mind and heart which tended then
to keep men apart, today would draw them together. The
79

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
conditions which operated to produce failure two centuries
ago would conspire to success now.
Is it then too much to hope for that with the materials still
in our hands, and with still greater spiritual possessions of
the temper and ideas necessary for such a task, we may
resume in our day what was given up now over two cen
turies ago? What was a fruitless task then, may well be
a fruitful one now; that which terminated then in a great
division, may well terminate now in a new and glorious
union. He would need to be entrenched within his own
prejudices, blind to some of the most glowing pages of his
tory, who would close his eyes to such a hope, and rule it
out of the bounds of possibility. But he who says, "I believe
in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church," must believe
that by the operation of the same Spirit we shall grow
together into one household of God, being "built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself
being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the
Lord ; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation
of God in the Spirit."
The second application of the historical method in the
approach to the problem of Church unity lies in the tracing
to their psychological origins those religious ideas which
have become incorporated in the life of different branches of
the Catholic Church. It consists in an effort to appreciate
what we may call the religious values of those forms of
Church faith and practice which have survived nearly two
thousand years of Christian life and worship, and to study
how these may be united in a larger conception of the
Church than any one of them separately represents. The
presupposition is that the Holy Ghost has not ceased to
operate in the heart of the Christian body. If therefore
there is any solid consensus of opinion and practice which a
considerable number of Christians cherish, which has been
80

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
incorporated by them in institutional form and perpetuated
by settled principle, then that opinion, that practice has
been authenticated, as it were, by the Holy Ghost. The
problem is to have that opinion and practice recognized and
its authentication admitted by the whole body of Christ's
people. And when that is done, the true dimensions of the
Catholic Church and its true inclusiveness will begin to
appear, and its unity will rise of itself out of a broadened
Christian consciousness. In a word, the one, true, Catholic
and Apostolic Church already exists, the Body and the
Bride of Christ. But it is not yet perceived, and it is not
yet realized on earth. Each one of the separate communions
on earth enshrines some portion of its total truth, and em
bodies some fragments of its total worth. But until each
one perceives that it is not in itself that total truth and has
not in itself that total worth, until each one comes to recog
nize the religious value of the truth embodied in other com
munions and thus for the first time perceives the Higher
Truth of which they are all a part — Church unity lies in
the realm of religious prophecy but not in the way of
immediate fulfilment.
At the present time, therefore, the real labor of all who
yearn for the unity of Christ's Church lies there. It lies
in showing the entire compatibility of those seemingly oppo
site ideas of the Church for which the separate communions
stand and to which they witness. It lies in showing that
men are in the main right when they assert, and wrong when
they deny. It lies in showing that neither are all right nor
all wrong, but that the truth lies in a synthesis of those
religious values for which each stands. Those who have
insisted on the value of liturgical worship, are right. History
proves it. So are those who have insisted on the value of
unpremeditated, open, congregational prayer. History
proves that too. "Those who have insisted on a ministry
of order, are right; so are those who have insisted that the
spirit of prophecy may light on any man." The theory of
81

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
the Sacraments which insists that the grace that is in them
depends on the way in which that grace is mediated, is
right; and so is the theory which declares that the grace
depends on the faith of those who receive them. Under all
of these conceptions there is a common truth which unites
all Christians. If Christians can affirm the truth in which
they do believe while the reality of that truth in which others
believe is not presumed to be questioned or to be denied, an
approach to unity is suggested which, if it be humbly fol
lowed, must, in tie end, lead us to the Higher Truth which
is the unity for which we all pray and to which we all aspire.
That rediscovery is not best made by hasty attempts at
external union. A common communion before we have
acquired the spirit of union or the spiritual perception of
the total truth which makes us one, can hardly hasten, but
may seriously retard, our progress. But Christians of all
communions need a spiritual education in those religious
values which they do not hold, or which are not embodied
in their own Church forms and practices. Here is a promis
ing and needed effort in the field of Church union in the day
in which we live.
Take, for example, the matter of Church worship. Chris
tians are more divided at this point than most people like
to believe. It is to be lamented that this is so, but there
can be no doubt of it. I have heard Episcopalians who
seldom attend any Church but their own, and who have
certain qualms of conscience if they do, assert after leaving
an orderly, dignified and reverent service of worship in a
non-Episcopal Church, that it did not even seem to them
that they had been to church at all. And non-Episcopalians
untrained in the Prayer Book and its forms of worship fre
quently come away with anything but a restful and grateful
sense of having been in the House of the Lord. Each has
been so strictly trained in his own form and method of
worship that the other seems strange, unfamiliar, and often
even forbidding. Yet underlying both there is the common
82

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
faith that where two or three are gathered together in His
Name, there is He in the midst of them; that supernatural
grace, of which the world knows nothing, awaits the souls
that meet before the invisible throne of grace; that prayer
can bring down unearthly blessings ; that divine pardon can
wash a guilty soul; that a lame man can be made to walk,
and a heart dumb with its grief can be made to sing — that,
in a word, spiritual miracles can be wrought akin to those
that were wrought in ancient Galilee. But this faith in the
efficacy of prayer and worship is expressed in different ways.
Two different, and both true and efficient, theories of I
worship underlie the services of the Church. According to
the one, the spirit of devotion is best expressed, the faith
of the believer is best aroused, his heart touched and quick
ened, by the use of common and familiar forms of prayer,
which gain in sweetness and in efficacy because they have
been sanctified by age-long use and fall like the dew from
heaven upon the ear and heart of the believer. The service
of worship is preserved in orderliness and assured in oneness
to all believers, by the common use of its great manual and
treasury of devotion, the Book of Common Prayer. On the i
other hand, there is the theory of worship which insists on
the idea of spontaneity, which believes in giving the Spirit
free rein and utterance, which feels itself limited and
cramped by the necessity of reading the same lessons, re
peating the same prayers, following the same forms week
after week and year after year. A book of devotion has its
place, according to this theory of worship, but not in pre
scribing the words or forms in which the quickened heart
shall utter itself. And any theory of worship which does
prescribe those forms seems to it to put a limit on the
liberty of prayer and prophecy which is a detriment to the
pure and unrestrained worship and prayer of God's people.
And there you are. These two theories of worship, each
sound in itself, exist side by side, and there is precious little
overlapping; there is precious little sign that after two or
83

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
three centuries of co-existence each so much as recognizes
the validity or the religious value of the other. It is rare
enough, for example, that one hears free prayer in any
Episcopal church. On the other hand, how rare it is in a
non-Episcopal church ever to hear anything but free prayer.
If the laymen in many of the non-liturgical Churches at
the time of devotion hear coming what promises to be a
collect, prejudice is likely to drive all thought of prayer
from their minds. A minister using the Book of Common
Prayer is sure to be asked why he uses a book that belongs
to another Church. When the matter of worship is dis
cussed, that discussion usually consists in the defence of one
or the other of these forms of prayer. Thus, Dr. Rainsford
has said, "I do not believe that to the educated spiritual
consciousness- there is any special appeal in variety of ex
temporaneous prayer." And per contra old Cotton Mather
has said that to use other than free and "unstinted" prayers
is a virtual denial of the Holy Ghost. Those who believe in
set prayer speak of the infelicities of extemporaneous
prayer, and those who believe in free prayer speak of the for
mality and unhelpfulness of read prayers; and nowhere is
there any perceptible approach to a general spiritual compre
hension of the religious value of each. The fact is that the
Anglican Church was the only Reformed Church which did
not admit free prayer in its service; and the Puritan Church
was the only Reformed Church which did not use set prayer.
Every other Church recognizes the place of each in its liturgy.
And not until the non-liturgical Churches recognize the
value and the need of Common Prayer which- touches that
which is most catholic in us, "which strongly links us to
our kind," and not until the Anglican Church restores to
her liturgy the free and unrestrained language of aspiration
and devotion, not until each of these two ideas of worship
is reinforced by the other, shall we approximate that spirit
of unity which alone can lead to a reunited Church. A
recent writer, Canon Rawlinson, in his article on the Church
84

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
in the collection of essays called "Foundations," an article
from which I shall quote abundantly, has remarked that real
Church unity, so far as Church worship is concerned, cannot
take place until the Pope of Rome appreciates and values
the Methodist prayer meeting, or until the Puritan learns
to worship with insight and devout intelligence at Mass in
St. Peters.* That is expressing the thing of course in its
ultimate terms. But some such synthesis in spiritual per
ception, and appreciation of religious value, is an absolute
prerequisite to what we call Church unity. And how much
of an education is needed a simple survey of the existing
Church order is sufficient to demonstrate to any man's
satisfaction. Or here is the theory of the Church itself. Again, at least
au fond, all Christians are at one. No one who bears the
name and shares the faith of Christ would put the Church
beside any other human organization, no matter what it is.
A thirty-third degree Mason harboring a feeling for his
order which is wholly beyond my ability to understand, and
at the same time a member of I care not what Church, draws
a line between the two which may be as thin as a hair, but
at the same time as fine and hard as a diamond. Every
Christian in his soul, be he rationalist or sacramentarian,
evangelical or sacerdotalist, Protestant or Catholic, cherishes
a supernatural idea of the Church, looks upon it as the Bride
of Christ, the supreme object of His love, the Body of Christ,
the very incorporation of His Spirit, the Heavenly City, the
New Jerusalem, the Communion of Saints.
But now, starting with this community of idea, that idea
proceeds to work itself out in two sharply contrasting
theories of the Church. According to the one, the continuity
of the Church life is to be found in the continuity of its
institutions, sacraments, ministry; according to the other,
in the continuity of faith, of evangelic experience in the
* "Foundations," p. 403. 85

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
heart of the believer; according to the one, the Church is a
kingdom whose power and authority are vested in its rulers
and delegated to those below; according to the other, it is
a democracy in which the power and authority are vested
in the people and delegated to those who are above.
According to the one, the Church is above all an outward
and visible entity, authenticated in history by its apostolic
priesthood, an organic body apart from which no Churches,
but only other Christian bodies or communions, exist.
According to the other, the Church is above all an invisible
and spiritual order, authenticated in history by the per
petuation of faith in the hearts of Christ's people, so that
wherever faith is, there is the Church, and wherever faith is
not, there, no matter what external proprieties may exist,
there is no Church. According to the one, the outstanding
Church figure is the priest; according to the other, the
prophet. In a word, the one is the Catholic, the other the Protes
tant idea of the Church. The one lays stress on the institu
tional, the other on the non-institutional and purely
evangelical idea; of which the one tends to regard the
ministry as primarily sacerdotal, the other as primarily
prophetic. Of course this antithesis is never quite absolute;
the priest is expected to give some spiritual evidence of
vocation, and the prophet is expected to have some form of
ordination. Nevertheless, it is from a divergence of respec
tive emphasis upon the priestly and prophetic ideas of the
ministry that whatever is distinctive in the two great historic
Christian positions proceeds. Upon the one hand "we have
the ministry of the Sacraments given the primary place;
stress laid upon institutions as the media of the Spirit's
operation; the conception of ordination, not as the recogni
tion, but as the bestowal of an office, and therewith of the
'charisma' or gift of grace needed to sustain it; and the strict
requirement that men shall not take upon themselves the
discharge of functions in the Church to which they have not
86

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
been formally commissioned."* But upon the other hand,
the supreme and determining principle is simply the Gospel;
it is by the heart of faith that the Spirit is received ; not the
Sacrament but Christians are the true "extension of the
Incarnation"; and the Christian community is to be sought
primarily not in any outward and visible network of eccle
siastical organization, but in the purely spiritual entity
begotten and constituted by the Gospel.
Now these two ideas also have been incorporated in two
co-existent, parallel organizations which cannot come into
union, much less inter-communion, because there is no
underlying spiritual apprehension of the religious value, im
portance and indispensability of the truth to which the other
bears witness and of which it is a visible embodiment. But
there is no likelihood that either will disappear. The Catho
lic idea is certainly here to stay. But so is the Protestant.
And the ministries of various Protestant denominations may
quite legitimately point to the witness of the souls they
shepherd and may exclaim with St. Paul, "the seal of our
apostleship are ye in the Lord." Regenerate souls, to their
thinking, constitute a validity of the Spirit which far tran
scends the validity of outward continuity or of visible ordina
tion. If each of these is here to stay, the hope and the only
hope of Reunion lies in a spiritual apprehension by the
proponents and believers of each in the truth for which the
other stands.
Yet such an appreciation by the Protestant of the Catho
lic Idea of the Church and conversely by the CathoUc of
the Protestant Idea, is just what is most noticeably absent
at the present time. The average Protestant, though he be
educated in Church history and even trained in the develop
ment of Church theory for the past two thousand years,
looks upon the Catholic Idea of the Church as an un-
scriptural, an unspiritual and an unwarranted crystalliza
tion in external and material forms, of the 'pure Gospel.'
?"Foundations," p. 382. 87

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
To him it is an obstruction in the path of Christianity, which
must be swept away by the rising tides of spirituality before
the Church can hope to win the assent and loyalty of intelli
gent and enlightened men. The Catholic Idea of the Church
is to him a survival of mediaevalism in our modern world.
It is an anachronism which cannot continue much longer.
I have talked with many eminent Protestant preachers and
teachers, and it is the rare exception to discover one who
has any patience with or any sympathetic or spiritual con
ception of the Catholic Idea of the Church.
Per contra, it is difficult to find a Catholic who sees an
historic or spiritual basis for the Church in the Protestant
position. He finds there much that is 'true' in individual
Christian experience. He discovers all the marks of a gen
uine Christian piety, an undoubted Christian faith, an
admirable ardor for the propagation of the Gospel. But
there is nothing in this of an ecclesia, a divinely instituted
and authenticated entity which is the very Body of Christ
and Organ of His Spirit.
And there you are again. And again a fundamental edu
cation in religious values alone can cause these two Ideas
to coalesce and point the way to their final union in the
truly Catholic Church. The Protestant must come to ap
prehend the indispensability of the Catholic position; and
the Catholic must learn to recognize the validity of the
Protestant witness; and together they must mount to the
higher Truth which includes them both.
"Each of the two great Christian types has need to be
at once the scholar and teacher of the other. The final
unity (which must assuredly be outwrought in God's good
time) will come not by way of compromise, but by way of
comprehension. Tmth is a synthesis, not an elimination, of
differences, and the claims of conflicting 'authorities' must
be harmonized by being included and justified, not negated,
in the ultimate whole."* So-called Catholic religion must
?"Foundations," p. 405. 88

HISTORICAL METHOD OF APPROACH
include, if it would be perfect, the so-called Protestant Idea.
At its best this stands for personal religion, for the spiritual
freedom of the individual, and for his answerableness in the
last resort to his Maker alone; for the prophetic word as the
dynamic which alone can vitalize the ritual of the priest;
for the truth of evangelism and the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free. "The Catholicism of the future cer
tainly cannot afford to disregard the truths of the Protes
tant witness, and must to a certain extent reinterpret and
revalue (without abandoning) its institutionalism in the
light of them."* It will recognize the right of all Christian
communities animated by the Spirit of Christ to be included
in that one Communion of Saints which is the blessed Body
of Christ's faithful people; it will recognize the spiritual
validity of any Protestant pastor as a true and godly min
ister of the Lord, although it might be difficult or impossible
to recognize him apart from episcopal ordination as in the
catholic sense and for Catholics a qualified minister of the
Sacraments; it will stress the faith of the believer as well as
the regular responsibility of the ministrant as giving grace
to the Sacraments; and it will view the Sacraments them
selves as one of the means of grace rather than as the sole
method of the impartation of the full sacramental grace of
Christ. On the other hand, Protestantism with its emphasis upon
personal faith, personal authority, personal responsibility,
personal religion, will grow, must grow into an appreciation
of the importance, indispensability of the Catholic point of
view. It must grasp the necessity of institutionalism, "of
rites and sacraments, as being neither dead forms, nor
illogical excrescences upon a religion otherwise wholly
spiritual, but as being themselves spirit and life, the natural
and normal media of the operation of the Word-made- Flesh.
So, again, Catholicism witnesses to the glory of Churchman-
ship, the sense of spiritual kinship and unity, not with a
?"Foundations," p. 40s. 89

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
section of Christendom, but with the whole; to the idea of
worship, as prior in religion to that of edification; to the
communion of quick and dead in Christ's mystical Body";
all of which "represent elements of historic religion which
neither Protestantism nor the universal Church of the future
can afford to lose."* It is here that Protestantism is weak
today. Its sense of Churchmanship and solidarity, of uni
versality, of compactness, of institutionalism — is all weak
where it needs to be strong.
What we need to pray for, then, is not that this or that
experiment of reunion shall succeed, not that this or that
plan of an interlocking Church relationship shall work out,
but that these two great contrasting Church positions and
ideas, each with a noble history, each with spiritual first-
fruits to justify its tmth, each firmly embedded in the reli
gious consciousness of our time and of all time, shall come
to understand each other; more than this, shall come to
understand that each has that to give the other without
which it cannot fully realize its own true, best life. What
we need to hope and pray for is, that out of a reunited con
sciousness, out of a Church consciousness in which these
two great historic, but by no means exclusive, Ideas shall
have met and fused, — that Church, one in faith, hope, doc
trine, one in spirit, love and truth, may rise on earth in
which all the children and families of our Lord shall meet,
and there shall be one fold, one Shepherd, and one Bishop of
our souls.
?"Foundations," p. 404.

90

THE PLACE OF THE CREED IN THE
LIFE OF THE CHURCH
IF the creeds were under fire before the war, they have
certainly been subjected to a direct bombardment by
it. All creeds for some time have been at a great dis
count, but today we have been assured that they have been
counted finally out. Reality, simplicity, intelligibleness,
rationality, activity, these are the keynotes of the religion
of tomorrow, and with them the continued use of antiquated
and metaphysical statements of faith have nothing what
ever to do. Even if the average man were able to under
stand or to assent to the articles of the Apostles' Creed, for
example, these articles in no sense describe religion as a
man understands it, or ought to understand it, or as he lives
it or ought to live it. It is not even an adequate summary
of the most salient features in the life of Christ. And it
certainly is an inadequate summary of the life of the Chris
tian. Is not therefore one of the most needed reforms in
the life of the Church in such a day as this, which calls
above all for simplicity and reality in religion, to remove
with reverence, it may be, but assuredly with courage these
ancient survivals of a faith that has gone; to free the atmos
phere of the Church, as it were, from any suspicion of intel
lectual insincerity; and to present men instead, to quote
Professor Hocking, "not with an impoverished religion or
with a minimum faith, but with a maximum faith expressed
in intelligible terms"?
It is not only the layman who feels like this about the
9i

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
creeds. Many a modern minister in our so-called "free"
churches has felt that he had no more sacred calling than
to rid his church of the incubus of the creed. Pitching
creeds overboard has become his most exhilarating and his
most sacred task. One is reminded of that famous night
in the National Assembly in the early stages of the French
Revolution when noble and bourgeois united in throwing
over one after another the ancient and traditional customs
of the old regime. So today ministers and people have
worked hand in glove to rid the Church of all the traditions
of the old ecclesiastical order. Theirs must be a Church in
its thought, ritual, practice, which is strictly down-to-date.
This labor of ridding the Churches of their creeds, and
incidentally of the old doctrines which the creeds contained
and intoned, has gone far enough in our day for at least
some observers to raise the question if already it has not
gone too far. There is a suspicion somehow that all is not
right. For with the creeds there seems to have vanished
something else, something quite impalpable, something that
defies description, yet something that is felt to be ponderat-
ingly real and having immense religious value. We grope
for words to describe it — historical perspective, a sense of
historical continuity; reverence for the past; the religious
value of the familiar, the ancient, the traditional; the im
portance of symbolism as over against sheer rationalism ; the
importance of intellectual conviction as related to duty; the
feeling that theology after all may have an immense bearing
on life. The wonder is if after all we have not parted too
hastily with an immense spiritual possession. The feeling
remains that our modern Church, now that we have it all
fixed up and furnished, lacks at least something that the
great cathedrals of the Middle Ages still possess. How shall
we word it? But the feeling itself will not down.
It will not down when we look at the architecture of many
a modern church. The floor is arranged so that everyone
can see the preacher. The aisles converge at the front.
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CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
It is a perfect auditorium. But somehow it fails of being
a Church. It will not down when we traverse the service. There is
not a note in it that can offend the most fastidious and
critical intellect. It is modern to the last syllable. Even
the doctrinal hymns are gone. The congregation is not
asked to sing "Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy
Cross I cling." Instead it sings "Christian rise and act
thy creed, Let thy prayer be in thy deed." When the place
comes for the Creed, instead of the old discredited creeds of
the Church, the worshipper rejoices to rise and say "I believe
in the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and in
the Golden Rule." What could be more simple and reason
able? "Who cannot say that?" he triumphantly remarks to
his friend as they go out. The prayers contain no sug
gestion that they are addressed to anyone either in heaven
or on earth. And the sermon is as shorn of Biblical theology
as a sheep just come from the shearing. What can be
more elevating, more rational? And yet with what longing
unsatisfied does many a modern soul escape from such a
service? And it will not down either when one considers the mood
which such a modernity produces, the feeling that it creates
toward the Church as an institution. The sweeping away of
all suggestion of supernaturalism has resulted in a certain
degradation in the thought of men for the Church. Some
how it has lost something of its spiritual authority, describe
it as you will. The thin but hard line between it and secular
organizations — its one great safeguard — has become dim or
disappeared altogether. One 'feels' for it in an immensely
different fashion from that feeling which made St. Francis
kneel at the altar of St. Damiens, or makes many a modern
saint find in his Church, as it were, an unearthly shrine.
Neither will it down when we consider the lack of stan
dard or conviction in much of contemporary religious
thought and feeling. In our reaction against dogma, we
93

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
have unhappily swung to the opposite extreme. Men today
are not only open-minded, their minds seem often to be
open at both ends. They are assuredly not dogmatic in their
beliefs. The question is whether the blind and shallow sen
timent which is the only substitute many people know for
the unshakable realities of faith, can be called belief at all.
Men are not bigots. But what are they? Where are they?
All of which is to say very cmdely and loosely what many
competent religious observers deeply feel and deeply de
plore. And the root of it they know to lie in the loss of
standard, of thoroughness, of religious competence and ade
quacy in the teachings of the Church; in the substitution of
ethics for religion; in the failure to announce, to interpret,
to impart these fundamental truths which from the first
have constituted the glory of the message of the Church, its
unique inspiration, the secret of its influence and of its
authority. In a word, we are brought sharply back to the creeds
themselves. The times in which we live call not for their
abandonment, but for their reintroduction. They have
been abused. Now is the time in which they should be
rightly used. They must not be used as tests of discipleship,
but it does not therefore follow that they should not be
used at all. And if they are to be used at all, they will be
used first as a standard of the teaching of the Church; and
second, as a general confession of faith by the worshipping
congregation. I suppose that slight hesitation, if any, would be felt in
agreeing that for standard of teaching, the old historic
Creeds — the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds — hold and will
continue to hold their place. Those best acquainted with
the history of Christian doctrine will probably be the first
to maintain this;* for they will best understand the value
of these ancient symbols for history, as landmarks in the
history of theological thought and learning. They epitomize
? Hibbert Journal, January, 1014. 94

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
for us the otherwise incomprehensible story of Christian
doctrine. They gather up into themselves the growing
interpretation, in the light of the needs of the world and the
thoughts of men, of the principle of the Gospel. They en
deavor to compose opposing tendencies of thought, and to
unite apparently antagonistic conceptions of the relation of
Christ to God and to man, or of the nature of Christ Him
self. Taken as documents of history, and historically
studied and understood; placing oneself at the standpoint
of their framers and of their age; allowing for the fashion of
thought and use of language, — they become not only noble
monuments of religious handiwork, but they become instinct
with spiritual suggestion, and fructify and deepen the
thought of him who reverently regards and uses them.
Yet even at this point we need an immense reviving of
reverence for the creeds and of their spiritual use by the
ministry as summaries of the essential Christianity, pro
voking thought, challenging interpretation, and so enlarg
ing and enriching the mind and heart of the interpreter.
Unfortunately we have swung a long way from that. We
need to re-read what Carlyle wrote about old clothes in
order to understand a kind of revival that is needed of
feeling for old creeds. Let us substitute the word creed
for the word clothes in a well-known passage in Sartor
Resartus: "Often have I turned into the old [creeds] market
to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that
mammoth street as through a Sanhedrin of stainless ghosts.
Silent are they but expressive in their silence of woe or joy,
passions, virtues, crimes and all the fathomless good and
evil in the prism men call life. Friends, trust not the heart
of that man for whom old [creeds] are not venerable. Oh,
let him in whom the flame of devotion is ready to go out,
who has never worshipped and never known what it is to
worship, pace and re-pace with constant thought the pave
ment of [Creed] Street and say whether his heart and his
eyes can be dry." 95

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Such a revival of the true understanding of the message
of the historic creeds, and a fresh incorporation of their
message in the teachings of the Church would go a long
way toward the revivification of the preaching and teaching
of the Church. For, as Rainey has said in his Cunningham
lecture on the development of Christian doctrine: "A high
Christian enthusiasm has usually been connected with
strong and decided affirmation of doctrine and with a dis
position to speak it out even more fully, that temper has
been venturesome to speak even as it has been venturesome
to do, as little fearing to declare God's will in human speech
as to embody His will in human acts. The framers of those
old creeds were fearless; and something of their fearlessness
imparts itself to the modern preacher who knows how to
use them." The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, moreover,
are the fountain-head of all other derived and subsequent
formulations of faith. Many creeds have been written and
will be written and ought to be written. Every one of them
consciously or unconsciously will repose on these original
incorporations in human speech of the unsearchable riches of
Christ. And there is value in origins which all who do not
wholly neglect the historical perspective well understand.
To be saturated for substance of thought and of feeling in
these ancient symbols is to acquire a richness and habit of
speech for which perhaps there is no substitute. And spirit
ual substance is thus unconsciously imparted to the believer.
Faith becomes fundamental.* By the use of these historic
confessions by the teacher of religion, religious faith no
longer remains vague, pious sentiment any more than it
remains blind obedience to authority: it becomes something
more than fugitive opinion; it implies truth or mature con
viction, tried and tested. Our age, as we have seen, is not
addicted to the same rigor and precision in religious as in
scientific reflection; there is no danger of excessive articu-
? Hibbert Journal, ibid, in loco. 96

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
lation in Christian thought. The creeds save the preacher
from the much more imminent danger of the utter opposite.
Besides being used as a standard of teaching, there is the
use of the creed as a general confession of faith by the wor
shipping congregation. Historically, liturgically, as a mis
sionary means for the propagation of faith, and from the
point of view of religious psychology, the recitation of a
confession of faith has always had a permanent place in the
service of worship. It had such a place from the first. "We
cannot but speak," said the early Apostles, "the things that
we have seen and heard."* At first this telling of the story
was necessarily spontaneous and individual. But as the
Church grew and as the members of these Christian congre
gations came together, they wanted to lift up their voices
in unison in a common testimony, in a general confession of
their faith. In the fourth chapter of the Acts we read how,
when the threatened Apostles returned to their fellows, they
all lifted up their voices with one accord, repeating the glori
ous sentences of the Second Psalm. This was the speaking
out by the whole congregation of their faith. And from
that day to this in the continuous worship of the Church
the recitation of its faith has had a permanent place. The
worship of any Church is impoverished without it.
Liturgically it is one of the most effective portions of the
service. Anyone possessing any degree of devotional temper
and sensitiveness who finds himself in the presence of a
worshipping congregation during the recitation or singing of
the Creed must be moved by it. The participation of the
congregation in the worship, the lifting of the worship by
the congregation, is the essence of a true liturgy. And pre
cisely as the congregation shares in the singing, in the pray
ers, in the Scriptures by their responsive reading of it, so in
the teaching, through the lifting of the Creed. It has also
its immense missionary value. Christians do not speak their
? See William R. Richards, "The Apostles' Creed."
97

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
faith out by themselves as they should. But they have a
vast opportunity of doing so in common. Let a man strug
gling with doubt listen to a congregation confessing its
faith in the Fatherhood of an Infinite God, in the Savior-
hood of Christ, in the blessed Company of all faithful people,
in the Life Everlasting, and it is an immense aid to his faith.
The general confession of faith in the Church is one of the
most potent means for its general dissemination. Students
of Mohammedanism have not hesitated to say that the con
tinual and universal repetition of the short, sharp creed of
Islam, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his
prophet," has been an immense source of its strength for
ages and one of the deciding factors in its spread. "Not the
rattle of Mohammedan sabers or the thunder of its cavalry
has been more terrible in the ears of its foes than the click
of these words in the teeth of Moslems." And Christianity
loses an invaluable aid in the propagation of the Gospel of
Peace unless it gives its congregation the opportunity of
uttering its faith. It is the act of utterance of good news
to the world.
From the viewpoint of religious psychology, the urgency
is just as great. Religious experience gains infinitely by
expression. Confession is thus an essentially evangelic act.
The escape of faith through the lips engenders it wonder
fully in the heart. To suppress feeling is thus to induce or
even to cultivate a kind of religious stoicism, a confirmed
habit of apathy that is devitalizing. But let a congregation
through the call to worship, the hymns, the Scriptures, first
be lifted to a level of religious thought and feeling and then
be given the opportunity to utter the faith felt, and some
thing real has been done for it. There are religious emo
tions which so burden and oppress the heart, and others
which so exalt and inspire, that they must have expression.
To stifle them is a wrong and harm to the religious nature.
To give them vent is to aid and cultivate the religious expe
rience. 98

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
Suppose it be admitted, then, that the use of some creed,
some general confession of faith by the congregation, should
be an integral part of its worship. The question remains,
What creed shall be used? Here we are confronted at once
by the historical fact that only one Creed has been used by
the Western Church for this purpose all through its history.
The Apostles' Creed has been its confession of faith. The
Nicene Creed has been the creed of the Eastern Church, and
is used in the celebration of the Communion by the Roman
Catholic Church and the Church of England in its various
branches. But the Apostles' Creed has been the confession
in its church services of the Western Church for fifteen hun
dred years. And the abandonment, in certain Churches, of
the inclusion of any creed in the service, has been due to a
general feeling that this Creed no longer can be used without
affront to the intelligence and conscience of modem men,
and that no satisfactory substitute for it has as yet been
evolved. Few will, I think, question the tmth of that last state
ment. How utterly unsatisfying the so-called modern sub
stitutes are for the ancient Creed even the most radical of
us, the ones least inclined to mediaevalism or even mysticism
or symbolism in any form, are the first to admit. Better
nothing at all than this parade of up-to-date sentiments
which masquerade in the place of a creed; this elimination
from the Creed of what are felt to be its intolerable parts,
leaving only the skeleton to be exhibited before a congre
gation; this total lack of any appeal to the emotions or
spiritual imagination; this unedifying recitation of modern
prose in place of the poetry of the ages and of the human
heart. These so-called creeds are mere specters of ethical
statement with neither outer beauty nor inner substance.
They are in effect a summary of opinions rather than a creed.
The thing has been tried, the thing is being tried, but it
simply does nothing. It gets nowhere. It fails utterly to
appeal, to lift, to satisfy, to do the work. The fact is, it is
99

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
either the old Creed or no creed at all. Some may question
this, but really there is no question about it.
All of us, also, who have any reverence for the past, any
sense of historical perspective, any gratitude for the posses
sion of common religious property in the midst of our divided
and distracted ecclesiastical world, feel a certain reluctance
to part with the use of the Apostles' Creed as a continuing
and living element in the life of the Church. We all feel
its worth as one of the few really great symbols which have
come down through the ages, binding age to age, and serving
to preserve the unity of the Christian faith in the various
transformations it has undergone in the broadening thought
of men. We all feel its immense importance as a common,
unifying expression of faith for the whole Church of Christ,
serving to link the smallest chapel in the least of the denomi
nations, even with the Church of Rome from which it seems
so separate, and to signalize to the world that it is one Lord,
one faith, one baptism. It remains today with the Lord's
Prayer, the only expression of faith in which all Christians
everywhere can and do unite. We all feel its spiritual
appeal. No one can say it or hear it said without having
deep spiritual emotions roused even by the sound of its
familiar and wonderful words, which produce the purest of
our spiritual experiences.
Not one of these considerations, however, or all of them
together, can save the Creed for practical use in our Churches
if it is true, upon the most careful and searching analysis,
that it puts a premium upon insincerity or hypocrisy, that
it flouts plain intelligence, indulges in double-dealing, en
courages vagueness and sentimentality in religious belief,
emphasizes negligible aspects of faith above those that are
paramount, and thus tends to undermine a sane and thorough
religious education and discipline. The question is, does it?
Here it ought to be said at once and frankly that a creed,
any creed, worthy of being used in a corporate way, as an
act of fellowship with the past, with the future, and with
IOO

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
differing degrees of Christian experience in the present, will
contain, ought to contain, at least something which may
not correspond to the immediate experience of every indi
vidual in that fellowship. Is this age the whole of the
world? On the contrary it is so small a part of it that what
we call a century would make no appreciable bend in the
great sweep of the eternal curve. Shall we say that because
we do not understand a truth, therefore it is not true? Shall
we deny to our children what we happen not to want our
selves? Shall we have a new creed with each succeeding
generation? Or shall we have a separate creed for each
person in a given generation? Now no one surely ought to
say what he does not believe. But neither ought he to deny
the privilege of permitting other people to say what they
do believe. The Creed, in a word,* "is a corporate and not
an individual product." It is "the outcome of an expe
rience that is greater than any individual, the experience of
a corporate fellowship in Christ. An individual Christian
may very properly approach the Creed with the conviction
that it carries with it elements of a religious and Christian
experience that may go beyond his own capacity to assimi
late. ... In scientific and political matters we constantly
live in reliance on such a wider experience. May not the
individual Christian expressing his loyalty to Christ and to
the fellowship that comes from Him naturally expect to
find in the Creed which is the outcome of that fellowship,
elements that go beyond his own experience?" Would it be
the kind of a creed that he really needed if it did not? Do
we want a creed no higher than our heads? Or higher than
our heads are now? Or higher than anybody's head now is?
Has not every one of us had the experience of growing into
comprehension and affection and use of Christian ideas that
once were wholly strange and even forbidding? Bushnell
once wrote these words :f "The most fructifying writer I
* Edward S. Drown, "The Apostles' Creed Today,'' pp. 68, 69.
t "God in Christ," p. 87.

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ever read was one in whom I was at first able only to see
glimpses or gleams of tmth; one whom it required years of
study and reflection, of patient suspension and laborious
self-questioning, to be able fully to understand; and, indeed,
whom I never since have read at all, save in a chapter or
two which I glanced over just to see how obvious and clear
what before was impossible had now become." And what is
the most fructifying creed? One that is immediately and to
everyone entirely comprehensible? What everyone can
catch off the bat and hold? Or one that does offer a future
of study, meditation, patient suspension of judgment and
laborious self-questioning?
We come, however, to the center of the difficulty which
many feel with respect to using the language of the Creed.
Can they use it literally? And if not, can they use it hon
estly? One needs in this connection to remember the pur
pose of the Creed. And, whatever its origin, that purpose
we know to be the provision for the worshipper of a confes
sion of his personal commitment to God and to Christ. The
reader is referred for an able elaboration of this funda
mental idea to the discussion of* Dr. Drown and of Dr.
Johnston-Ross. The point to be remembered is that the
Creed is not so much the definition of philosophy as it is the
expression of a Life. "In the definition of philosophy we
must change our expression as often as we change our
philosophy. But in expressing a Life we may rightly use as
our own, expressions which past ages have framed to express
a Life which is theirs as well as ours. If this Creed were
the definition of a philosophy one might perhaps condemn
one who denied the philosophy but continued the phrase
ology. But since it is the expression of a Life, then no one
truly rejects this Creed unless he disowns the Life of which
it is perhaps an archaic but certainly a beautiful and a
sacred expression. "I [therefore] join," Lyman Abbott has
?Edward S. Drown, "The Apostles' Creed Today," pp. 65-68;
G. A. Johnston-Ross, "The God We Trust," pp. 18-19.
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CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
written, "in reciting the Apostles' Creed without hesitation.
In the cathedral service this Creed is sung, not recited, and
this fact justifies my understanding that the Church regards
this recital as an act of worship, not as a definition of the
ology. As in all acts of worship, as in all emotional utter
ances, the phrases are of necessity inexact, and they inter
pret differing though not inconsistent conditions of thought
and feeling in different worshippers. Worship is feeling, and
feeling can never be accurately defined."
We have here the hint of the basis for a justification of
the symbolic interpretation of certain articles in the Creed.
Against this, a recent writer, Dr. Hocking, has vigorously
protested.* "Organized religion," he has declared, "has
done itself much injustice by an overindulgence of the anti
quarian temper in regard to religious language. . . . Noth
ing can excuse a willing obscuration of possible literalities
by figures of speech, or a veiling of actual issues in the haze
of romantic distances. The Church has an infinite concern
in metaphysics; and the only persons fit to act as teachers
of religion are men who have metaphysical convictions and
are capable of 'agonized consciences' over questions of tmth
and error. If the Church were put to the awkward choice
of excommunicating either its heretics or else those priests
who are willing to take their creed in a sense primarily his
torical, psychological, figurative, pragmatic, or diplomatic,
it would far better preserve those heretics and purge itself
of those priests . . . who wish to flatter it by a Platonic
adherence for sentimental or aesthetic gratification — the
religious philanderers of the day."
If what Dr. Hocking means in this remarkable paragraph
(in which, by the way, the creed is still regarded as pure
metaphysics) is that religious language must always be used
in what he calls sheer literalness, then I appeal from him to
an even profounder intellect and an even more influential
religious teacher. I would commend to him and to all who
* Atlantic Monthly, September, 1918, p. 384.
103

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
are inclined to agree with him a reading, a re-reading, of
Horace Bushnell 's remarkable Dissertation on Language, in
his famous volume, "God in Christ." As you will remember,
the thesis of that treatise is that all words are symbols, and
necessarily inadequate symbols; that it is a profound mis
take to accept words not as signs and images but as abso
lute measures and equivalents of truth; that the higher one
goes in human experience, the more inadequate words be
come to express the reality of which they are but the
symbol: "My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold
The tmth, as cabinets enclose the gold";
that the language of the Bible, the language of Christian
doctrine, as well as the language of the creeds, are full of
words which not by their literalities but by what they point
to as signs and symbols, seek to express the realities for
which they stand; that religion has a natural and a pro
found alliance with poetry; that all religious language car
ries in its bosom some flavor of meaning or import derived
from all the past generations that have lived in it; that lan
guage is rather an instrument of suggestion than of absolute
conveyance of thought; that it is incapable of such definite
and determinate use as we have supposed it to be in our
theological speculations; that there is, in a word, a mystic
element in language and also in the views of Christian life
and doctrine that follow; that we need the mystic temper
to use language aright; that a mystic is one who finds a
secret meaning both in words and things back of their com
mon or accepted meaning, some agency of Life or Living
Thought hid under the form of words and institutions and
historical events ; that in opposition to one-sided intellectual-
ism we need mysticism adequately and truly to understand
religious realities, which lie at the bottom of the written
word, — this is the thesis set up and defended by Dr. Bush
nell with surpassing force and eloquence. A comprehension
104

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
of this truth makes the priest who prides himself on his
literalism the one of whom the Church really needs to purge
itself; makes the literalist the real enemy of the truth;
makes the man who insists on taking his creed 'literally'
the one who truly does it violence; makes the 'literal' inter
pretation the one which falls short of the truth. Since the
Creed is not metaphysics but Life, and since the language
of the Creed is a sign to reality and not the adequate and
complete expression of it, the spiritual truth enshrined within
it is one which must be from age to age spiritually and even
mystically discerned. As Bushnell says, it is the absence
and not the presence of this mystical temper which has done
the real damage to religion. Thus each man is not only war
ranted, he is compelled to his own interpretation of the
common Creed. There will necessarily be as many interpre
tations as there are interpreters; to every man according to
his faith. "Words are feeble indications of spiritual things —
yet words forever bubble up as a sign of the movement in
the deep waters. Some of these are caught and fixed as
standards of suggestion adapted to verbal representations of
faith, and become to the Church media of the preservation
of faith and tokens of fellowship, but not perfect or magical
or final. It is the ecclesiastical language of one age passed
on to the next and again passed on, thus taking to itself new
meanings without any revision of its actual language. The
creed is mystic in essence, conceived in symbolism, imbued
with poetry, and it is practically and equivalently rather than
mathematically and verbally adequate." Thus the phrase
"conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary"
does 'mean' the virgin birth of Jesus. The question is, is
that all that it 'means'? Plainly not. If there had not
been the larger meaning of the unique soul and nature of
Christ, there never would have been any mention of His
unique birth. The latter is the sign or symbol of the
former; and with utter consistency one may use words for
what they imply or include, as well as for what they in black
105

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
and white express. This is not evading the physiological
reference; it is tracing it to its roots, giving it its religious
value. Similarly the phrase "He descended into hell" says
or 'means' more than that in the belief of early thinkers
or writers Christ visibly descended into the place of departed
spirits. It 'meant' more than that when the words were
first used. It 'meant' that for our sakes Christ descended
to the lowest depths of our humiliation. It 'meant' that a
soul cannot sink so low that Christ will not be found be
neath him. It 'meant' that redemption reaches to the nether
most moral depths of human degradation. And it 'means'
that today.* The creed, it must be repeated, "has its impor
tance for the Christian life not because it expresses accuracy
of theological statement, but because it expresses a living
faith in Jesus Christ and in the revelation of God that comes
through Him. To approach it as a matter of intellectual
statement is radically to misinterpret the historic character
of the creed, and radically to misunderstand its value for us
today." What does the phrase "the resurrection of the
body" 'mean'? Even for those to whom it 'meant' the
resurrection of the flesh, it 'meant' also more than that.
It 'meant' what St. Paul 'meant' by a heavenly body. It
'meant' what we 'mean' by the preservation of personality,
the survival of identity, the fact of recognition ; the opposite,
that is, of vague, impersonal and unrecognizable soul that
makes personal immortality such a pale, flaccid, colorless
and even forbidding fact. The word "body" gives body to
the idea of personal survival, and lends it the one thing
needful, the essentially Christian idea of the possession
after death of the distinctive and recognizable characteristics
of personality. This is not to toy with language; it is to
know how to use language that admittedly is neither philo
sophically or mathematically exact. The creed, in a word,
?W. E. Orchard, "The Outlook for Rehgion," p. 197. "No hell
into which a man may fall places him beyond the compassion and
power of that tireless, unflinching love."
106

CREED IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
is a Catholic sign, not a theological trap. "You are not to
pick out with pinchers of the inquisition a clause here and
there; to hold it up before some cleric or priest, to exact
from him some straight conventional assent, or, if he fails,
pin him to the wall and say, 'Now we have you.' " We may
with perfect sincerity repeat the Creed with its implications
of mystery and miracle as the essence for Christian belief as
a body, rather than as the scientific expression of an indi
vidual present opinion. Thus one possesses continuity in
every age, and in so doing one worships "in truth."
From this point of view, the rejection of the Creed from
the worship of the Churches points to an outstanding and
even fatal weakness for which an immediate corrective is
needed. Too many Churches are intellectually one-sided.
They lack historical perspective, any bond of union with
the past; they lack the mystical temper which is of the very
essence of religion and in search of which multitudes have
gone wandering in the fields of theosophy, thought-culture,
oriental mysteries, and the debilitating idiosyncrasies of
Eddyism. Why is it, Dr. Orchard has asked, that the
Churches* "have not only divided the Body of Christ, but
have also divided the soul of man? If one sets out in this
modern world to find a Church which shall provide real
spiritual fellowship, one soon discovers that in every Church
that exists we can have freedom or authority, mysticism or
rationalism, the supernatural or the natural, liturgical or
free prayer, ... a worship dominated by awe or a public
meeting; whereas a human being wants all these things at
one time or another. But no, I must take my choice. If I
have one, I cannot have the other; I must join a denomina
tion which feeds only half my nature and denies that the
other exists, find my fellowship with people that have only
one eye, make the rest of my spiritual pilgrimage on one
leg." Who can doubt what the other half nature, the other
eye, the other leg, of our intellectualized, rational, modern-
?W. E. Orchard, op. cit., p. 264. 107

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ized and wholly down-to-date Churches and Church services
really is? For a recovery of this mystical temper and
appeal, for a reintroduction into the service of the Church
of this note which makes itself felt in a realm beneath that
of mind or intellect, no means lies so ready to hand or proves
so effective as the use of the ancient Creeds. The batteries
of a scientific criticism may riddle them, but no criticism can
detract from their enduring worth so long as they are the
universal symbol of a faith which gives to the soul an assur
ance of a moral universe which justifies noble conduct and
excites pure and unselfish emotion. They can be but the
symbols and signs of unutterable things. They stand for
the mysteries of life which no man can express. We have
had put into our hands these ancient symbols which in count
less struggles have been the watchword of faith; they are as
steeped in religious sentiment as old violins are steeped in
harmony. They convey the piety of the ages to the use of
each separate human believer; they carry into the mind
suggestions that are indefinable. And in the largest possible
interpretation of the Church's mission and destiny, these
symbols will remain the messengers of the divine spirit to the
souls of men. "Most sure am I that no spectacle more
sublime, or more truly pleasing to God, will ever be wit
nessed on earth than if taking up this holy confession, sanc
tified by the faith and consecrated by the uses of so many
ages, all the disciples of Jesus on earth may be heard answer
ing it together, sect to sect, and people to people, and rolling
it as a hymn of love and brotherhood round the world."*
?Bushnell, "God in Christ," p. 356.

108

VI
CONCERNING UNITY
IF there is any one thing for which I have a passion, it is
for the unity of the Church in accordance with the
mind of Christ. Just what outward form this unity
will take I do not know. Part of its wealth and power will
consist in its gardenlike variety. There will be no toleration
in it, for toleration is not a virtue. Toleration is a phase of
arrogance — arrogance clad in garments of humility. The
only legitimate toleration is to suffer fools gladly.
In the diversity of Christ's unity, those who differ will
each one demand for his brother that liberty which he
demands for himself in matters which must be speculative.
The effort will be in the direction of mutual, sympathetic
understanding and not that of antagonism, controversy and
dialectic victory. Life in the Church will not be a mere
modus vivendi but an interchange and blending of privileges
granted by her charter of liberty.
Of course I am speaking only of and for Christians, that
is to say, those who unreservedly accept Jesus Christ as God
made man. There are doubtless other unities but I am con
cerned here t only with Christian unity. If there are those
who choose to group around some other center or person
than Christ, God and Man, we have no desire to say them
nay or to interfere with their project. Neither have they
reason to complain if we refuse to abandon our unifying
center in order to include them.
Again, it would not be gain to aim at oneness as an end
in itself. Mere oneness would be a sort of saccharine monot-
109

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ony in which differences would not have been reconciled but
rather smothered and hidden under a thick coat of senti
mentality. Unity, as I understand it, will come as the result
of whole-hearted devotion to a common center, a common
vision and a common purpose. We do not seek for unity in
order to come to Christ, but in coming to Christ we are
thereby committed to unity according to His mind, and if we
fail to find unity we have missed the way.
Experience has taught me that what is needed for a long
time to come is unsuspicious, friendly personal touch be
tween Christian leaders of every opinion, not in order that
they may have joint services or force outward ecclesiastical
unity, but that they may come to understand one another by
the only process that can create mutual understanding. I
mean by human fellowship and interchange of living thought
for which even friendly books are no substitute. Christian
unity, which is a thing of the Spirit and is founded on
Christ's twofold law of love, comes first, antedating ecclesi
astical unity, in which unity of worship is a necessary climax.
It is dangerous to confuse the manufacture of joint services
for the sake of their being joint, with unity.
One further thing. It was largely through fiery preaching
that the Christian Church was rent. It will have to be by
equally fiery preaching that the Church will find her unity.
The preacher of today has a unifying opportunity never
afforded his forbears of the pulpit.
On my homeward voyage with a gallant Division of the
A. E. F., a dinner was given the Commanding General at
which the presiding officer asked me to speak. He assigned
me a subject. In introducing me he said — he was a Protes
tant — that we were returning from a land where every town
or village had but one spire proclaiming that there was but
one Church for all. To the layman that seemed the only
Christian state of affairs. On the background of this
memory, I was asked to address our soldier citizens on unity
in our own land. Many laymen today applaud every move
no

CONCERNING UNITY
in the direction of unity, be it intelligent or unintelligent,
because they intuitively and rightly feel that a divided
Church is not only an economic absurdity but also a funda
mental disloyalty to Christ. They recognize that unity is as
much an essential of the Church as of the government of
the land. It does not need extraordinary powers of percep
tion to reach this conclusion. Moreover, it does not require
any argument to convince men intellectually that the chief
hindrance to Christianity as a social force is its disunity.
We all agree that the status quo is lamentable. But when
the question of faith and order is broached men make them
selves ready to battle. As to faith, it comes first; afterward,
the protective order that insures to faith its highest oppor
tunity and its perpetuation. Principles precede the govern
ment which embodies them.
Perhaps our earliest duty is to sort out fundamentals
from matters of indifference or second value. I come back
from war service abroad, where men were unified by a com
mon purpose, to find that, in the churches here, there are
battles going on that look to me as important as the con
troversy which once raged over the number of angels that
could stand on the point of a needle. When Christ first
came He came to simplify religion and to separate the tith
ing of anise and cummin from the weightier matters of the
law. The process needs repetition now.
So far as practical schemes for the promotion of unity are
concerned, it needs a bold and convinced man to condemn
any one of them without at the same moment presenting a
superior plan. This is so of the proposed concordat be
tween Congregationalists and Episcopalians. It may require
modification or even radical change, but, as it stands, it
reveals a temper of mind and a mutual understanding
seldom exhibited by any considerable group of men.
It is encouraging to find that we are moving away from
that form of prejudice which condemns a doctrine or usage
because it is embedded in a system with which we are at
in

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
odds. There is such a thing as "free Catholicism" which
studies such matters on their merits. As a result there are
Protestants in faith and order who are deliberately and intel
ligently appropriating, as part of their belief and worship,
doctrines and usages which formerly they would have con
demned ex animo without giving them a hearing.
What I have written represents conclusions reached after
years of honest struggle to see and embrace the truth. I
have come to think as a habit not in terms of disunion, but
in terms of that unity that is clear to the mind of Christ
though but dimly to me, a unity to which I am irrevocably
committed and which I pray God I may be permitted to see
some day in all its splendor and power.
C. H. Brent.
July 14, 1919.

112

VII
SOME HISTORICAL MATERIALS
FOR PRESENT USES
i. CONFERENCES BETWEEN ROMAN CATH
OLICS AND PROTESTANTS IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
a. THE CONFERENCE AT THORN, 1645
WLADISLAV IV, king of Poland, was reigning in
1643 iu fortunate peace while other lands were
torn with the conflicts of the thirty years' war.
He earnestly desired to make a religious peace also through
out his dominions. For this end he sought through his prel
ates to gather representatives of the different churches
together for conference over their differences. His first at
tempt having failed in 1643, he issued later himself a royal
invitation for such a conference at Thorn. In response to
his letter deputations representing Catholics, Lutherans,
and Reformed met together at Thorn in the year 1645.
Full reports of their sessions and discussions have been pre
served. They contain much that is interesting and good
reading also for present occasions. We give only the fol
lowing summary account of some things said and done there.
The King, in his letter of invitation to the conference,
after referring to the devastations caused by the war, wrote:
We may now turn our eyes from the pleasantness of tem
poral peace to the inner peace of minds, which the divine
love works, and in which the honor of God, the salvation of
113

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
souls, and the honor of the name of Christians consists. . . .
It is now generally known that the bloody hate of Christen
dom, for the amelioration of which human wisdom can dis
cover no means, which daily grows worse and worse, flows
from no other source than the disunity of religion.
As a means for the attainment of religious peace he
thought that personal conference was desirable rather than
learned writings, for, he said, "nature has given to mortals
no more precious gift than living speech, wherein mouth to
mouth and voice to voice respond, and, if words fail, the
quiet reading in the eye and upon the forehead of another
the truth of his perceptions and the honorableness of his
feelings can be discerned."
From the address of the King's Commissioner at the open
ing of this conference, these extracts are pertinent to any
discussions of Church unity.
"The first thing which we deem especially important is a
mutual liquidation of the conflicting church usages, since
we have well learned that the chief cause of lamentable
fallings apart is to be found in mutual misunderstandings.
For first we have not to deal with this, whether one or the
other party rightly believes, but only what one believes."
He urged each side to express its opinions concerning the
teachings in question "in brief, simple and clear sen
tences. ... It should all be made clear as the noonday
what each side really taught, and what was falsely attributed
to it as its teaching." He reminded them that throughout
his address he had carefully avoided the current word "dis
putation," — an example well worthy of our imitation. He
observed that "they had learned through the experience of
a century that religious controversies are hard to end be
cause there is no one living to act and judge, who can be
heard, and in whose decision one may rest." Urging them
to free and brotherly discussion he continued: "Only this
way to peace stands still open. If we attain nothing in this
way, then it must be said that Christ left no means whereby
brothers may come back to unity, although they may warmly
114

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
desire it; and that would be to affirm what is most prepos
terous and shameful for the Christian religion, and a griev
ous offense to Christ, who is king of kings."
It was inauspicious for the results of this conference that
the several parties in it could not at the first session come to
any agreement as to how they might pray all together. In
subsequent sessions each party presented in turn statements
of its positions. The conferences became more and more a
series of attacks and counterattacks between the advocates
of the different positions, the Roman Catholics maintaining
that they should not be judged by the alleged consequences
of their doctrines, while the Protestants contended that they
could not fully declare their beliefs positively without also
setting them over against the negations of the other side.
The King's hopes of their coming to an agreement gradually
ended in disappointment, as the conference drifted upon the
shoals and conflicting currents of more superficial discus
sions concerning their oppositions, each speaker refuting the
errors imputed to him by the others. How often since, by
their positive Christian affirmations, churchmen might have
been united, but by their negations of each other's positions
they have been divided. After three months of discussion
without reaching agreement, the conference was dissolved
by the King's order. The Protestant theologians thanked
the Catholic bishops for the genuine humanity which they
had shown, while, they in turn replied, "As we began it in
love, so in love will we end it." So they separated "mutu
ally saying friendly farewell."
b. THE WORK OF SPINOLA, BISHOP OF
NEUSTADT
ONE of the peacemakers of the seventeenth century
was Christoph Royas von Spinola, a Spaniard by
birth, who became in Madrid a general of the Franciscan
Order, and afterwards Bishop of Tina, and in 1686, Bishop
"5

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
of Neustadt. Moved by the lamentable persecutions of the
Protestants in Hungary and Silesia he conceived with great
earnestness a plan of reconciliation in the distracted lands
through mutual conferences between Catholics and Protes
tants. He sought first to win for this project the support
of the Protestant princes and theologians. With this object
in view, refusing the prospect of a life of comparative ease
and preferment, he started in 1675 on his mission as "an
Ambassador of the Peace of the Church." We will not fol
low the narrative of his efforts and travels, which continued
to the day of his death, but there are some things which he
did and said that are well worth recalling.
Spinola saw that he must begin his great undertaking
with private interviews and personal conferences with those
who might be persuaded to work together for the common
cause. In the course of his journeyings he went to Han
over, where he hoped to receive some favor, and he found
there the Duke and his wife full of earnest hopes for the
union. There he met with Molanus, a Lutheran theologian,
who had been a pupil of Calixtus, who also was seeking the
way of reconciliation. In the seclusion of the Abbey of
Loccum, these two, Roman Catholic and Protestant, studied
for seven months together the doctrines over which they
were divided. As the result of their quiet pursuit with each
other of the way of reconciliation, they did not indeed reach
a final and complete plan of reunion, but they did succeed
in working out a draft of rules to be observed in further
prosecution of their endeavor. They went over the different
doctrinal teachings concerning which Protestants and Catho
lics were most divided, seeking for the common elements of
belief in them and the points for mutual approximation.
While it was impossible that an Ecumenical Council should
be called, they hoped that a council sufficiently general
might be convened to give adequate expression to those
Christian beliefs that should be confessed in common. Such
a consummation they thought would not be impossible if
116

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
methods of controversial discussions then prevalent should
be abandoned, all bitterness and jealousies given up, and
disputations about words should cease. The parties, they
believed, stood nearer one another than in such controver
sies it had appeared. They said, "Peace is to be held higher
than the Chalice."
After this conference with Molanus, Spinola entered into
correspondence with leading Protestant theologians, and he
formulated with much care twenty-five irenical propositions,
which Leibnitz is authority for saying had been gravely
considered and received some private sanction from the
Pope. He then travelled hither and thither to carry for
ward this plan. In 1691 he received a royal patent as
General Commissioner in the business of the union, all
spiritual and worldly members of Protestant churches were
authorized to enter into conference with him, and their
authorized deputies to receive every magisterial assistance.
Spinola said that the few theologians well disposed to this
effort were to be sought out with the Lantern of Diogenes,
since things had come to such a pass through mutual fault
that only those were accounted to be truly zealous teachers
who persecuted most extremely the opposite party; and con
sequently among a thousand teachers hardly three could be
found who would venture to come out openly in behalf of
Church peace and its best restoration. He succeeded, how
ever, in finding a considerable number who were privately
disposed favorably toward it. They said "they found noth
ing in his scheme which might not be tolerated and granted
in the love of peace and truth."
Spinola, so we are told in the preface of an early account
of his endeavors, was "possessed of a character of great
sweetness, piety and moderation seldom found among con
troversialists, especialy in the heat of their disputes."
He maintained throughout his life-long work that the
"differences between the Roman Church and the Protestants
do not consist in the fundamentals of salvation, but only in
117

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
the matters that are added." While he was arranging to
bring about a private conference of princes and councillors,
in 1693, Prince George, who had supported him, died, and
shortly afterwards Spinola also ended his labors, and entered
into the peace of the children of God.

c. MOLANUS' PROPOSALS
SUBSEQUENTLY to Molanus' understanding with
Spinola, he sent to Bossuet a paper, which was after
wards printed, entitled, "Private Thoughts" concerning re
union. He advanced in it the following sentence as a
theorem: A reunion of the Church of the Protestants with the
Roman Catholic is not only possible, but in respect to its tem
poral and eternal gain it is also so advantageous, it so com
mends itself to each and all Christians, that every one,
wherever opportunity offers, in every place and at any time,
should feel under obligation to contribute a mite to it.
He had in mind "a union which might be effected on both
sides with an uninjured conscience, and uninjured mutual
esteem, and with the uninjured preservation of the distinc
tive principles and hypotheses of both Churches." He men
tioned six requirements which might be granted for the
future reconciliation. Among these the fifth relates to
ordination. The Pope might confirm the protestant ordination already
consummated, in a fitting and nowise prejudicial manner;
while for the future, after the union should be accomplished,
the ordination should be bestowed by the Bishop according
to the Roman usage, whereby it is expressly to be noted that
we would consent to the confirmation of our ordination solely
for the sake of the Catholics in the event of the union, so
that no weak one among them could doubt the efficacy of
the sacraments offered from us to them.
118

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
Molanus proceeds to indicate a method which might be
followed for the accomplishment of such union; he would
have first a private conference of those who are disposed to
it, and he specifies with much care the character and stand
ing of the representatives of both sides who should be called
to it. He then proceeds to divide the questions which they
would have to consider into three classes: (i) Those relat
ing to different forms and explanations of expression. (2)
Those questions which are in themselves matters of con
troversy, but with regard to which in every church assent
or dissent may be tolerated. (3) To the third class belong
such controverted questions between Protestants and Catho
lics which neither through verbal explanations nor through
accommodation can be determined, since here decided oppo
sitions occur. These latter questions Molanus, like others
in those times who sought for reconciliation, would leave to
be referred to a future general council. He was careful,
however, to define how such a council should be constituted ;
equal votes were to be given, and the same recognition to
both parties, and the Protestant Superintendents were each
and all to be validated and recognized as actual bishops,
who together with the Roman bishops should be invited to
the General Council, and have equal standing and voice.
He adds further conditions concerning the Scriptures as the
ground and norm of the Council, agreement with the ancient
Church according to the first five centuries; the doctors may
discuss, but the bishops only may decide; and each side is
to be under obligations to abide by its decisions as they may
be declared in canons, or else to be subject to its penalties.
Molanus enters into an elaborate discussion of the chief
points of doctrinal divergence, endeavoring to show how they
may prove capable of being harmonized sufficiently for the
unity to be effected; but into this doctrinal discussion we
need not follow him.
The conception which Molanus had in mind has been
rightly described in these words: 119

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
To express it after the manner of our time he thought of
the papacy as a wisely limited constitutional monarchy or
a Church constitutional League, in which the whole should
be firmly held together in mutual peace, while to the indi
vidual provinces a proper freedom should be granted for
their inner administration (Hering, op. cit., ii., p. 223).

d. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MOLANUS,
LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET, 1 692-1 701
1EIBNITZ, who had become interested in the views of
J Molanus, sent a copy of Molanus' "Private Thoughts"
to Bossuet, commending them to his consideration. This
was the beginning of an extensive correspondence between
the chief philosopher of the age and the great Roman prel
ate and famed orator, in which the whole field of contro
versy between the Protestants and Roman Catholics was
thoroughly traversed, and in the course of which, as partici
pants or as interested spectators, princes and princesses, the
ologians and courtiers, the Emperor Leopold, the King of
France, and two Popes, Innocent XI and his successor, were
concerned. Some of the most notable women, also, of that
time became so deeply interested in it that it is related of
them that they did not find the long epistles of learned
scholars and divines dry reading. One of them, Madame
de Brinon, was particularly engaged in this correspondence,
for much of it passed through her hands, and, when it was
delayed or interrupted, she was indefatigable in her efforts
to bring the negotiations to some more satisfactory issue.
A French Catholic, Pellison, who had become engaged in
the correspondence, wrote of her to Leibnitz, "Madame
Brinon finds fault with me on your account. She says, and
I believe she is right, that we think of nothing else but your
dynamics, and not at all of your conversion, which is the
one object of her desire, as of mine."
This exceedingly interesting episode of church history
120

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
has received but passing notice from the writers of general
history, as indeed it would require a volume to do full jus
tice to its discussion. As it marks the close of repeated
attempts to reconcile the two great bodies of Christendom,
the Roman and the Protestant, the study of this prolonged
correspondence may furnish useful precedents to indicate
what may be attempted and what avoided in future efforts
to attain a living Christian understanding between these
two long estranged communions of the one people of God.
We can only allude to some suggestive points in this pro
longed correspondence.
One relates to the method of discussions, the object of
which is not so much to change different opinions as it is to
reconcile them. Leibnitz wrote to Madame de Brinon:
"In important matters I like reasoning to be clear and
brief, with no beauty or ornament — such reasoning as
accountants and surveyors use in treating of lines and
curves." Of his correspondents on the other side he wrote:
"The force and beauty of their expressions charm me so far
as to rob me of my judgment; but when I come to examine
the reasoning as a logician and a calculator, it escapes my
grasp." A second noticeable point is a difficulty which Bossuet,
the eloquent orator, may have felt more deeply than Leib
nitz, the logical reasoner. Bossuet wrote that he could not
conceal from Leibnitz "one great difficulty that many Prot
estants under the beautiful cloak of the simplicity of the
Christian teachings would remove all mysteries and bring
religion back to common truths." Here we meet again the
psychological differences which unconsciously often stand in
the way of a happier solution of what we are so content to
speak of as "our unhappy divisions." One who has no
mystic sense of communing through nature with something
diviner than is seen — who never amid the silences of nature
listens as though nature were about to speak of things
unutterable — one whose beliefs must be as defined as fields
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APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
are by their fences, while anything undefined on the far
mystic horizon of knowledge is to be regarded with mis
trust, — he cannot understand the symbolism of faith, and
may too readily judge the Catholic worship to be an inheri
tance of superstition, and to fear as idolatrous forms and
modes of worship in which devout souls have felt themselves
to be in the presence of God.
Not only the logical understanding but also the spiritual
imagination are both good gifts of God, and to reject either
one from the service of His church is to cease to be truly
Catholic-minded. A third point to be noticed is that the entire discussion
revolved around the question of the decrees of the Council
of Trent. That indeed was the rock of offence on which all
these movements and hopes of reconciliation during the
seventeenth century were broken. To that as a general
council or a final judgment the Protestants could not sub
mit. It is likewise noteworthy that the argument which
Bossuet used against those who denied its authority might
be turned with equal point and poignancy upon the pseudo-
Catholicism of those who would make the councils of the
ancient undivided Church the supreme court of last resort
for all churches now.
"If," so Bossuet argues, "the Protestants agree concerning
Tradition so far as this, that through it only the sense of
the Holy Scriptures can be made intelligible, then there
would be scarcely any difficulty left over. But if the learned
writer exalts so high the agreement of the ancient Church of
the first five centuries, and the five general Synods, so I ask
him, above all, whether Christ has promised only through
five centuries and by five general Councils to be among his
own?" This leads directly to another characteristic of this famous
seventeenth-century discussion, one which was a chief cause
of its failure; viz., each side appealed to a different seat of
authority, while neither of them appealed directly and above
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HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
all to the living authority of the Spirit abiding in the Church
to lead it into the truth. Whether they thought the au
thority was to be found in the letter of the Scriptures, or in
Tradition, or in General Councils, or in St. Peter's line of
succession, it was an externalized authority, not the witness
of the Spirit from the beginning given to, and teaching
through the whole progressive life and faith of the Church.
It was not a judgment of the Christian experience of God
with us in Christ, to which alike they might make final
appeal. Leibnitz, very much like Erasmus, was ready to
submit to another Council, if a truly general one should be
called; Bossuet had submitted to the Council of Trent, and
would go to no other; Luther had appealed directly to Christ
through the Scriptures and to the soul's experience of His
grace. The InfallibiUty does not reside in the existing
Church at any one time; the voice of the whole Church of
all the ages declares the truth of the Incarnation, which each
successive age knows in part. That is the tme Light which
lighteth every man coming into the world. The Life is the
light of the Church. Wherever it shines it is its own evi
dence. This correspondence, which had been soon broken off,
was resumed by Leibnitz in 1699, an occasion for it having
been offered. But it had been assuming a more controver
sial tone, and its failure was becoming apparent. It ended
without agreement in 1701. Bossuet's biographer, Cardinal
Bausset "cannot understand why all these negotiations,
which had opened so hopefully, and in which so much talent
and goodness had been engaged, came, as by some fatality
to no results." A later editor of this correspondence said
that "the union had failed through the fault of men and
things." Leibnitz himself said it had failed because of
"reigning passions." When disappointed in all these efforts,
Leibnitz wrote to one of his friends, "I too have labored
hard to settle religious controversies, but I soon discovered
that reconciling doctrines was a vain work. Then I planned
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APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
a kind of truce of God, and I brought in the idea of tolera
tion, which had already been suggested in the peace of
Westphalia." In one of his letters he had written to Bossuet
that instead of insisting on the decrees of the Council of
Trent it would be better "to agree upon another method, —
which in some measure resembles that of the geometrician,
and that takes nothing for granted except that which the
opposer in fact admits, or which one may regard as estab-
Ushed by a fundamental proof." But at last when all his
reasonings had failed, Leibnitz wrote, "I believe an overture
from the heart is necessary to advance these good designs."
That is the Christian court of last resort.

2. MOVEMENTS FOR REUNION OF PROTES
TANT CHURCHES
a. THE PEACE-MAKING TRAVELS OF JOHN DURY
AMONG the chief apostles of reconciliation of the
Jr\. seventeenth century was one who described his mis
sion in these words, "Having first dealt with my own side
and gotten their consent unto this aim, I have offered myself
unto the rest as a Solicitor of the Councils of Peace, and a
Servant of the Communion of Saints in this matter." In
the preface of a book of his entitled, "A Model of Church
Government," he speaks of himself as "John Dury who hath
traveled hitherto in the work of peace among the churches."
A brief narration, as he calls it, condensed from his diary of
his journeyings to and fro, shows how indefatigably he had
labored during the years 1631-33 throughout Germany on
his mission of peacemaking among the divided churches of
the Reformation. These travels from England to the conti
nent, all over Europe, and back to England again, in the
unwearied and never despairing pursuit of the object to
which he had early devoted his life, never ceased until after
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HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
fifty years of devoted labors he found a final resting place
in Cassel; where, though no longer able to continue his
journeyings, he continued his endeavors by writing letters
to the Universities and to men of eminence in behalf of the
union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches* His nu
merous writings contain many passages which with but slight
changes might be published as tracts for the present times.
He was ministering humbly to a company of merchants
in Elburg, Prussia, when the call came to him to become a
missionary of peace throughout the Protestant kingdoms.
It is interesting to note that the call to this life work came
to him first from a layman, possibly from the king of Sweden.
Dury thus describes it:
The first inducement which bound my conscience was the
call which I had to think upon the same, which I could not
but answer, except I should have been wanting to my duty
in the ministry of the Gospel. Therefore as I was provoked
to think upon the Object of Faith and Truth I thought others
would be moved in like manner to do the same. . . . The
second inducement was the necessity of the times to heal the
breaches of the Protestant Churches which we are all bound
to pray for, and I in my simplicity did think what I am
bound to sue for unto Almighty God I ought also to use my
best endeavors, so far as God doth enable me, to promote.
This quotation contains an application of the doctrine of
the perseverance of the saints to which in the prosecution of
the duty of Church unity we may well take heed:
I came to this resolution that I made a Vow of persever
ance in the Worke, whether I perceived any reasonable fur
therance of the Worke or no, in respect that I conceived it to
be a necessary Duty, when the event did depend on God's
special Providence.
The spirit in which he pursued this life-long mission of
?A sketch of his life is to be found in the Constructive Review,
June, 1914, by Newman Smyth. 125

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
reconciliation shines forth from this passage which he wrote
a few years later:
As for myself my whole work is to judge of mine own
ways how to keep them pure and without offense towards
all, how to hold forth the Word of life, and thereby to stir
up every one to follow peace and reconcile differences, which
are destmctive of Church and State, in a Gospel way, chiefly
when God doth open a door of opportunity unto me, and this
is all that I am to meddle with in my place and calling, and
as I hope without human respects and worldly ends never
to be wanting to this, so beyond this line no consideration,
no man nor thing, God willing, shall ever draw me.
In order that he might represent the Anglican Church as
well as the Presbyterian he had received additional Episco
pal ordination in the cathedral of Exeter in 1634 without
thereby renouncing his previous ordination, and with the
imposition of hands of several presbyters together with that
of the bishop himself.
One frequently comes across in Dury's writings graphic
descriptions of the evils of the divided state of Protestant
ism; the following is a specimen:
We stand as a tall man distracted in his thoughts, and
divided in all his resolutions; who hath no command or
little use of his members, because they are all out of joint,
and hang, as it were, loose one from another. Thus the
Church, the tallest of any Reformed in Europe, and fit to
be leader of the rest in the spiritual conquest of Canaan
doth stand within itself and to others useless.
But Dury even amid his ever recurring disappointments
never became a pessimistic deplorer of existing evils, or a
self-opinionated, destmctive agitator; above all he was a
constructive Church statesman. He held himself up to this
clear note: "The tme way of advancing Christianity is not
destmctive, but edification."
His method of overcoming the dissensions of the churches
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HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
is worthy of our study and imitation. Primarily it was a
personal method. He is always seeking out individuals who
may promote his cause. He spared no effort or travel to
find the right men who might prove helpful. He would
gain the few here and there that they might reach the
many. Then he adopted and pursued to the end what he
called the way of "amiable conferences." He would have
nothing to do, however, with what he regarded as conferences
for scholastic disputations. He writes:
Except I can perceive the conference to be intended
towards the use of edifying, I shall not meddle with it. That
I may not be mistaken that what is intended concerns the
use of edifying, I take the measure of my own and other
men's aims by two Rules: the first is, if either the matter
itself is not fit to manifest some part of God's glory, or if
the aim of those that handle it is not set professedly to show
forth that part of the glory which the matter offers; then I
conclude that the handling of it is not intended to edifica
tion. The second thing is, that if the matter and handling
of it is to the end of the commandment which is charity,
then I conclude that it is intended for edification, because
charity doth edify.
He laid down several rules for the conduct of such con
ferences. They are an excellent combination of logic and
charity. He would have "an orderly way of proceeding in
all doubtful matters to find the decision thereof." He de
precated the "confusions which hitherto by confused means
of agitaton have been unavoidable." In current religious
discussions, and especially through the papers, this obser
vation is very much to the point:
Nor is there anything that doth more intangle and in
crease the multiplication of needless Debates, than the mis
take of the points of difference either wilfully or ignorantly
entertained, By this means Satan doth enable and engage
men's spirits to make their contentions inextricable, endless,
and irreconcilable; for when the question is not distinctly
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APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
stated, the men are entered upon controversy, they will
rather alter the point of debate twenty times, than seem to
be found in error once.
He was too intent upon the one aim of unity to be
drawn aside by any minor differences. Matters more essen
tial he would seek to reconcile "by a fundamental confes
sion of faith, and of duties requisite unto salvation, which
might be common to all, and openly professed as the sum
and substance of religion and badge of our fraternal union."
He sought also "a common and infallible rule of interpret
ing the Holy Scriptures." He was, however, to some extent
advanced beyond his age, for his love for unity had led him
to deprecate the habit of maintaining systems of doctrine
and forms of Church government by means of isolated pas
sages or meanings of particular words of Scripture.
He elaborated a plan for a conference on unity which
anticipated, by over two centuries and a half, our plans for
a proposed World Conference on Faith and Order. We
give it, slightly abbreviated, from his "Way to heal our
present distempers."
Let all parties who take the Holy Scriptures for their
Rule of Faith and Practice, set forth positively and declare
plainly, either what they judge to be fundamental in Matter
of Doctrine and Practice, or clearly commanded for Edifica
tion, or that in which they profess a full agreement with
their Brethren, Then, First, let the parties by some of their
selected men (who shall do all things with their consent and
knowledge) make a Draught of the full agreement of these
former Declarations, and that being imparted unto all an
Acknowledgment be made concerning it in that whereunto
they all have attained, and wherein they mind the same
thing to edify one another in the Truth whereunto they are
come. Secondly, let the same parties declare negatively
the things wherein they conceive they disagree from each
other. And when these Declarations are drawn up, let those
who have perused them add their advice concerning the
Ways of reconciling Differences, and then let some selected
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HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
men, the most Moderate of each Party, be called together
to set down the joint agreement of their Advices concerning
the way of reconciling Differences, and according to that
Agreement, let them make a trial of reconciling the Differ
ences, and Offer it to all only as an Essay without preju
dice to any, to be considered. Thirdly, Let the same
Parties declare both positively and negatively the Rules
by which they are willing to walk inoffensibly towards
those with whom they do not agree, and in case any
offense be given or taken, How the same ought to be
taken away by mutual consent. Here then the same
selected men, or others, may set awork to peruse such
Declarations, and gather into one Body the Rules where
unto all sides will agree to walk to avoid offenses.
As a means of overcoming ecclesiastical and dogmatic
separations Dury sought to turn men's thoughts to "prac
tical divinity." He brought back to England a letter signed
by several German divines urging the British divines, as
eminently fitted for the task, to prepare "a full Body of
Practical Divinity." The Church too often has been
tempted to make logic greater than love; it was Dury's ever
repeated message that if men, and especially the ministry
of the Church, should seek first to practice love, the divi
sions that imperilled Protestantism might be dried up at the
source. He had observed the dissensions that spring from
ministers preaching "particular things" too much, and
"over-shooting themselves" in their zeal for special parties;
he would stir up the ministry to preach rather "the main
things which discover the life and the spiritual estate of
Christ as the Truth is in Him." He had learned to see things
in their large relations and their lasting values ; he saw, as he
expressed it, "the nature and property of the Work itself
as it hath place in the kingdom of God." "This conviction,"
he says, "grew upon me, when I had been a certain space
in action." He had noticed among scholars that "the small
est differences of opinions beget ordinarily the extremest
differences of affection." He pointed out a common fault
129

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
of human nature even among religious people in this obser
vation: "Great disputes fall out from small matters, whence
schisms and separations at last arise in the Church."
Dury urged certain mles for "a Professor of Christianity
in entering into a Debate, ... He was to consider the
Worth of the Subject and the End of Edification." Besides
this, he would emphasize first "how to state the question
rightly." As long ago as 1660 this ambassador of the peace
of the churches would have nothing to do with partisan
names. He proposed that the names which had then become
current, such as presbyterial, prelatical, congregational and
others should be abolished as distinctive of the churches,
and that they should be known simply as the Reformed
Christians of England, Scotland, France and Germany. He
had at heart "the common cause of Protestantism." What
he meant by that for his age he describes as follows: "(1)
The Interest of Scripture Knowledge. (2) Of the Life of
the Spirit. (3) Of orderly Walking in all God's Ordinances
Natural and Spiritual. (4) Of the Communion of the
Churches in reference to mutual Edification in the fore-
named matters." For us now after the war it is no longer
the common cause of Protestantism but of Christianity
itself that is at stake. For the sake of this common cause of
Christians throughout the world his warning from that age
of the trial as by fire of the Reformation should come to
us, — "If the common cause of Protestantism be made any
thing less than the Propagation of the Light of the Gospel
it is foully mistaken."
It may be tmly said of Dury that he had "hitched his
wagon to a star"; one luminous Christian idea he had fol
lowed through the confusions and revolutionary changes of
those tumultuous times. He had gone forth in obedience
to his heavenly vision in the later period of the Thirty Years'
War; he had kept on his single purpose through the Civil
War in England, during the period of the Commonwealth,
and subsequently in the time of the Restoration. He had
130

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
not, however, escaped bitter reproach from many sides. A
partisan of the straiter sort, William Prynne, in the time
of the Commonwealth had characterized him as "the time
serving Proteous and ambi-dexterous divine"; to which Dury
replied that he was "the unchanged, constant and simple-
minded Peacemaker." His stedfast pursuit of his one aim
throughout all changes and failures, is evidence of the pos
sibility of living at any time by Christian principles which
shall stand the test of all times. This "traveler in the way
of love," as he once described himself, had passed beyond
the plain of crowded, conflicting interests, above the habit
able foothills of toleration, and gained from loftier height
the vision of one people and Church of God, who is over all.
After a long life of over fifty years of unceasing labors in
his old age, Dury's travels were ended, yet in his retirement
he continued to correspond with men of eminence in behalf
of the union of the Reformed and Lutheran churches. But
he seemed to have sown the good seed among the theologians
on stony ground. Shall we say that he had failed? Mid
way in his career, when some of his labors had come to
naught, he said, "although there is not much appearing out
wardly yet some grounds are laid which I am confident the
gates of Hell shall not prevail against." Shall we say that
such a life was wasted? He had kept the vow of his youth.
Through wars in the world, and amid strife of tongues in
the Church, he had walked in "the way of doing all things
in love"; for he saw a better country, and he died in faith,
not having received the promises, but having greeted them
from afar. He being dead, yet speaketh; and not he alone.
In every generation since there have been those who have
sought the peace of the churches and pursued it. It is not
for us to say that these have spent their strength for
naught; for their labors are our heritage; their prayers our
promises; the fruits of their devotion are within reach of
our hands; the harvest of their sowing is already ripe for
our generation to reap. 131

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
b. CONFERENCES FOR REUNION OF THE
CHURCHES IN ENGLAND
i. Archbishop Cranmer's proposal for a Synod. In
1552 Cranmer wrote to Calvin urging that a synod be con
vened of "learned and godly men, who are eminent for eru
dition and judgment, who might meet together and compare-
ing their respective opinions might handle all the heads of
doctrine and hand down to posterity, under the weight of
their judgment, some work not only upon the subjects them
selves, but upon the forms of expressing them." He men
tioned particularly "how exceedingly the church of God
had been injured by dissentions and varieties of opinions
respecting the sacrament of unity." To this letter Calvin
earnestly assented, deeming Cranmer's opinion just and
wise that "in the present disordered condition of the Church
no remedy can be devised more suitable than if a general
meeting were held of the devout and the prudent, of those
properly educated in the school of God, and of those who
are confessedly at one on the doctrine of holiness. . . .
Thus it is that the members of the Church being severed,
the body lies bleeding. So much does this concern me,
that, could I be of any service, I would not grudge to cross
over ten seas, if need were, on account of it" (Calvin's Let
ters, Bonnet's Ed., v., ii., p. 345). This project, on the
death of King Edward, who favored it, fell through. Cal
vin's controlling aim, however, as appears from this letter,
was to preserve the unity of the faith from being destroyed
by the dissensions of men. It was not the unity of the
Church itself so much as the agreement in handing down to
posterity the tme doctrine of Scripture, that he had, above
all, in mind.
2. At a conference concerning the relations of the Angli
can Church with the Roman Catholics, which was held in
the year 1575 in Westminster Abbey, the Anglican bishops
protested that it was not for them to prove the Church's
132

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
doctrine to be true; they professed the old established form
of Christendom; if it were attacked, they were ready to
answer objections. So the case was foreclosed from the be
ginning. As Froude remarks, "they were but actors in a
play of which the finale was already arranged" (History of
England, vol. vii., p. 75).
3. The Hampton Court Conference in 1604 needs only
to be mentioned. It left the relations between the bishops
and the Presbyterians even more embittered than it was
before. The last words of the king, as he passed out of the
room," were, "I will make them conform, or I will harry them
out of the land, or else do worse."
4. Another less known conference was held in London in
1 641, consisting of ten bishops, ten earls, and ten barons,
appointed by the Lords, and presided over by Bishop Wil
liams, of whom this much may be said in his favor, that he
was held in disfavor by Laud. There were several men of
moderation in this committee, but besides proposing sev
eral changes of a conciliatory nature, they accomplished
nothing; it was only a half-hearted effort for reform.
5. Archbishop Usher's "Reduction of Episcopacy unto
the form of Synodical Government received in the ancient
Church." This proposal of Usher received much favor from
the Puritans for some time afterwards, and moderate Church
men were not unwilling to accept it, but the bishops were
not disposed to regard such suggestions, and the Puritans
in their hour of dominance were not inclined to compromise.
Again its failure of adoption leaves us to speculate as to
what might have been. Now this Reduction of Episcopacy
to a Synodical form, which failed then, returns for sugges
tive reconsideration in connection with the pending formu
lation of plans for some method of organic reunion which
were inaugurated by the General Assembly of the Presby
terian Church in May, 1919. Usher wrote concerning it:
True it is that in our Church this kind of presbyterial
government hath been long disused. And how easily this
133

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
ancient form of government by the united suffrages of the
clergy might be revived again, and with what little show
of alteration the synodical convocation of the parties of
every parish might be accorded with the presidency of the
bishops of each diocese and province, the indifferent reader
may quickly perceive by the pemsal of the following pro
posals. (Works, vol. xii., p. 527.)
It may best serve our present purpose to quote an excel
lent summary of those proposals in comparison with exist
ing Presbyterian usages, which is given in a recent volume
on "Episcopacy and Unity," by H. A. Wilson (p. 147).
The idea of Usher's "Reduction" was to combine the
essential features of Presbyterian discipline with a modifi
cation and extension of the episcopate. Churchwardens and
sidesmen were to fill the post of Presbyterian lay-elders, and
to make their voices heard in the organization and discipline
of the parish. The clergy were to assist in the direction of
the affairs of the diocese, and so the bete noire of Puritan
ism, episcopal autocracy, would be at least moderated. In
every parish the rector or incumbent, with churchwardens
and sidesmen, were to meet at short intervals for the settle
ment of parish affairs and discipline — this was to answer to
the Presbyterian Kirk-session. In each rural-deanery a
suffragan bishop was to be placed, and he was to assemble
at frequent intervals all the clergy and lay-officials of his
district to deal with the business which should arise — this
was to be the equivalent of the Presbytery. A diocesan
synod should meet each half-year presided over by the
"bishop or superintendent (call him whether you will),
answering to the Presbyterian Provincial Synod. Lastly,
all the bishops and clergy of a province were to meet every
third year with the primate presiding, who "might be the
moderator of this meeting"; this was to answer to the
General Assembly of the Kirk.
6. The Savoy Conference, so called from the old palace
in which it was held in 1661, ended in the disappointment
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HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
of the hopes of the Presbyterians, and in 1662, the Act of
Uniformity was passed. The separation, as of a great gulf,
fixed by that act, remains to this day. Towards each other
the Established Church of England and the Nonconformists
are in a state of schism. A recent Anglican writer says of
the Hampton Conference, it was "a deplorable example of a
lost opportunity." Of the repeated endeavors of Baxter and
others during this period to find some measure of agreement
with the bishops a historian of the "Ecclesiastical History
of England," has observed:
An opportunity had arisen in the history of the Church of
England for healing a wound which had been bleeding ever
since the Reformation. A moment had arrived, calling upon
the two great parties, into which that Church had been so
long divided, to look at differences in the light of wisdom
and charity. But the history of mankind presents so many
misapproved conjunctions of circumstances, that students
of the past become familiar with lost opportunities.
(Stoughton, op. cit., ii., p. 107.)
When looked at as merely differences of opinions con
cerning vestments, forms of worship, or theological dogmas,
these failures to find some common ground of Christian
fellowship seem to mark a period in English history of
unpardonable oppressions, mutual uncharitableness, and
disastrous loss to the Church. When viewed in their larger
relations to political history and as moments in the progres
sive development of the Church in its stmggle for free exist
ence amid the then existing conditions, these repeated efforts,
and their seeming failure, take on a different and prophetic
aspect; they bear witness to the Life, in the Church, itself
incorruptible, through losses gathering strength, and coming
forth from a period of disappointed hopes to a new age of
fulfilment. From our biological point of view, in accord
ance with analogies of nature, the ways of providence in this
prolonged struggle of the Spirit of Life, in which is liberty,
135

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
through this whole period of English history, receive their
explanation and their justification.
7. In the year 1659 Stillingfleet published his remark
able "Irenicum or Weapon-Salve for the Wounds of the
Church." In 1674, Tillotson, afterwards Archbishop, to
gether with Stillingfleet, held a conference with several Non
conformist divines in London. But they were frowned on
by most of the bishops and aspersed by their clerical breth
ren. Subsequently two other similar efforts were made, in
one of which it was proposed that those having presbyterial
orders should receive further episcopal ordination in these
words, "Take thou legal authority to preach the word, and
administer the sacraments in any congregation of the Church
of England, where thou shalt be appointed thereto." When
these negotiations became known the cry was raised that
the Church was in danger. Parliament passed what Bishop
Burnett called "a very extraordinary vote that no bill to
that purpose should be received" ("History of My Own
Time," p. 176). Tillotson, however, did not give up his
irenical endeavors. In 1689, under the more favorable con
ditions upon the accession of King William, he entered upon
a larger, more determined scheme of comprehension. He
prepared a paper, so his biographer tells us, in which he
enumerated "concessions which will probably be made by
the Church of England for the union of Protestants."
Among these it was proposed that in the future ordinations
should be made by the bishops; that those already ordained
by presbyters should not be required to renounce their pre
vious ordination, but that they should receive conditional
ordination from the Bishop in this or some like form, "If
thou art not already ordained, I ordain thee," etc. This
plan was finally rejected by the lower house of Convoca
tion, and Parliament passed the Act of Toleration, and that
of comprehension disappeared.
In a diary referring to it there is found this lament over
its failure: 136

HISTORICAL MATERIALS FOR PRESENT USES
What a deplorable case we are reduced to that so many
attempts for reformation (comprehension) have been un
successful, particularly that most famous in the beginning
of the late reign, 1689, when so many incomparable persons
of primitive candor and piety were concerned therein, of
which my Lord Archbishop of York has spoke to me with
deep concern; for which disappointment all good Christians
have the deeper cause to sorrow, because we are positively
told that in all probability it would have brought in two-
thirds of the Dissenters in England. Lord send us Thy
Holy and Peaceable Spirit to influence the hearts of such as
have power in their hands to heal our piteous breaches in
Thy due time? (Ralph Thoresby's Diary, cited by Wilson,
P- 234.)

137

VIII
HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND
OPINIONS
i. CONCERNING ORDINATION BY BISHOPS
QUESTIONS relating to episcopacy and ordination
became matters of concern in England when in the
earlier years of the Reformation exiles from Eng
land began to return and reformers from the con
tinent came over to England. Whether members of the
Church of England should commune freely with the Re
formed Churches on the continent brought also the question
of non-episcopal orders to the front.
In a volume on the "Church of England and Episco
pacy," Camon A. J. Mason has collected a series of extracts
from Anglican scholars and divines from the earlier Eliza
bethan period until the so-called Catholic Revival of the
nineteenth century. He shows by this catena of passages
the trend of Anglican opinions on these questions from the
beginning of the Reformation. Two main tendencies are
thus indicated, the stricter view of the necessity of episco
pacy to the esse of the Church, and the more moderate view
of those who would concede that episcopal ordination was
not in all cases necessary. It is sufficient to cite a few such
extracts to indicate the prevalence of the latter opinion.
Archbishop Jewel: "Neither doth the Church of England
depend on them (i.e. the bishops), ... If there were not
one, yet would not the whole Church of England have to
138

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND OPINIONS
flee to Louvain" ("Defense of Apology," Part ii, Ch. v.,
Div. i).
Dr. Hammond, chancellor of the diocese of London, wrote
to Lord Burleigh in 1588, as follows: "The Bishops of our
realm do not (so far as I ever yet heard), nor may not,
claim to themselves any other authority than is given them
by the statute of the 25th of King Henry VIII, recited the
first year of His Majesty's reign, neither is it reasonable
they should make other claim, for if it had pleased Her
Majesty with the wisdom of the realm to have used no
bishops at all, we would not have complained justly of any
defect in our Church" (cited by Selbie, English Sects,
P- 38).
Archbishop Whitgift was the first of the Elizabethans to
maintain against the rising party of the Presbyterians the
office of the bishops to ordain; he asserted that "the bishops
were appointed as successors to the apostles, especially in
certain points of their functions" (Mason, op. cit., p. 29).
Richard Hooker. The moderate views of the judicious
Hooker are too well known to require explanation; it is
enough to cite these words concerning the power of ordina
tion in the Church:
The whole body of the Church hath power to alter with
general consent and upon necessary occasions, even the posi
tive laws of the Apostles, if there be no command to the
contrary and it manifestly appears to her that change of
times have clearly taken away the very reason of God's first
institution (Book vii., 5, 8). There may be sometimes very
just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made without a
bishop. . . . Howbeit as the ordinary course is ordinarily in
all things to be observed, so it may be in some cases not
unnecessary that we decline from the ordinary ways (Book
vii., xiv., n).
Without citing further opinions from the succeeding pe
riods, we note the precedent of ordination per saltum in
1610. James the First, desiring to force episcopacy upon Scot-
139

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
land, had three presbyters of Scotland, who had been or
dained only by the Presbyterian rite, consecrated as bishops
in London. The Bishop of Ely, Dr. Andrewes, on that occa
sion raised the crucial question that they should first receive
episcopal ordination as presbyters. The Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr. Bancroft, who was present, maintained,
that "thereof there was no necessity, seeing where bishops
could not be had, the ordination by presbyters must be
esteemed lawful, otherwise that it might be doubted, if
there were any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed
churches." This applauded to by the other bishops, Ely
consented. A slightly variant version was given of what
Archbishop Bancroft said, viz., "that there was no necessity
of receiving the order of priesthood, but that episcopal ordi
nation might be given without it." This would be ordina
tion per saltum. It has become of some importance in
present discussions since the last Lambeth Conference of
Anglican divines in 1908 declared that "it might be possi
ble to make an approach to reunion on the basis of conse
crations to the Episcopate on lines suggested by such prece
dents as those of 1610."
Moreover the late Bishop of Salisbury, John Wordsworth,
after an elaborate study of "Ordination Problems," advo
cated the course of giving ordination as bishops, in ac
cordance with this precedent, per saltum, to Presbyterian
ministers; this course would pass over, and involve no ques
tioning as to the validity of their previous ordination as
presbyters. Bishop Wordsworth gave several reasons for
it such as these:
"The Anglican Communion is competent to dispense with
any rules of discipline which do not touch the essentials of
ordination as to matter, form, intention, and minister . . .
The Gelasian principle of the suspension of ecclesiastical
mles in times of necessity is also in its favor." He argues
further that "the principle of the Apostolic Canon exempli
fied in the freedom of ordination not only of laymen when
140

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND OPINIONS
pointed out by a vox dei, but of persons endowed with spir
itual gifts, without any previous probation, is even more
pertinent. For the highest churchmen must recognize in
many leading Presbyterian and Nonconformist ministers a
remarkable exhibition of the grace of God and a ministry
blessed of Him." He urges also that "the course proposed
would avoid casting any doubt on the ordination already
received, and no doubt exceedingly valued, by the Minis
ters so consecrated Bishops" (pp. 130-132). In this con
nection reference may be made also to the view expressed
by Professor Briggs in his distinction between the impart
ing in ordination ministerial authority and ministerial func
tion, or between ministerial character and jurisdiction
("Church Unity," p. 154).
The following precedents for additional Episcopal ordina
tion are noteworthy:
1. The Lutheran theologian Molanus, as we have al
ready observed (p. 118), proposed that for the sake of
reunion the Roman bishops should confirm the Lutheran
presbyters without in the slightest degree prejudicing their
previous ordination.
2. In England in 1582 a Scotch presbyter, John Morri
son, applied to Archbishop Grindal for licensure. His
request was granted, and license was given in this form
which is to be found in Strype's "Life and Acts of Edmund
Grindal," pp. 402, 596.
A license to administer holy things throughout the prov
ince of Canterbury was granted by Dr. Aubrey (who now
executed the office of Vicar General) to one John Morrison,
a Scotchman, who had received his Orders in Scotland, ac
cording to the way of ordaining Ministers in the reformed
Church there. Which license, because it was somewhat
unusual, I shall here set down — Cum tu prcefatus lohannes
Morrison, &c. In English thus: "Since you the foresaid
John Morrison about five years past, in the town of Garvet
in the county of Lothian of the kingdom of Scotland, were
admitted and ordained to sacred Orders and the holy
141

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Ministry, by the imposition of hands, according to the laud
able form and rite of the reformed Church of Scotland; and
since the congregation of that county of Lothian is conform
able to the orthodox faith and sincere religion now received
in this realm of England, and established by public author
ity: we therefore, as much as lies in us, and as by right we
may, approving and ratifying the form of your ordination
and preferment [prcefectionis] done in such manner afore
said, grant to you a licence and faculty, with the consent
and express command of the most reverend Father in Christ
the Lord Edmund by the Divine providence Archbishop of
Canterbury, to us signified, that in such Orders by you
taken, you may, and have power, in any convenient places
in and throughout the whole province of Canterbury, to
celebrate divine offices, to minister the Sacraments, &c. as
much as in us lies, and we may de jure, and as far as the
laws of the kingdom do allow, &c." This was granted April
6. The exact copy whereof I have transcribed in the
Appendix. 3. The ordination per saltum of 1610 already mentioned
(p. 140).
4. In 1634 John Dury received additional episcopal
ordination, without renouncing his previous presbyterial
ordination, in the cathedral of Exeter, in order that he
might prosecute better the work to which he had devoted
himself of making peace among the Protestant churches for
the common cause of Protestantism.
5. Ordination of Presbyterian ministers after the Res
toration by Archbishop Bramhall.
When some of his clergy were found to have orders only
from Presbyterian classes, the question arose, "Are we not
ministers of the gospel?" To this Bramhall replied, "I dis
pute not the value of your ordination, nor those acts you
have exercised by virtue of it." He held that they at that
time had come under the law of a national church, and
could not have preferment or receive their revenues except
in a legal way. Therefore he gave them additional ordina-
142

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND OPINIONS
tion. In one instance he issued to a Presbyterian minister
this letter of orders:
Not destroying his former orders, nor determining their
validity or invalidity, but only supplying what the canons
of the English Church require, and providing for the peace
of the Church that occasion of schism be removed, and the
conscience of the faithful be assured that none may either
doubt of his ordination or be averse to his presbyterial acts
as invalid (Vol. i, p. xxiv).
6. Leighton, a Scotch presbyter, having been appointed
by Charles II Archbishop of Scotland, was ordained deacon
and priest, and then consecrated as bishop. Leighton
thought that every church might make such rules of ordina
tion as they pleased, and that they might reordain all that
came to them from every other church, and that "the
reordaining a priest ordained in another church imported
no more than that they received him into orders according
to their rules and did not infer the annulling the orders he
had formerly received ("Burnet's Own Time," Vol. i, p.
139 sq.).
7. Proposals for additional ordination by John Hum
phrey and certain Nonconformists in 1678-80. This passage
is taken from a pamphlet with this title: "The Healing
Paper, or a Katholic Receipt for Union between the Mod
erate Bishop and sober Nonconformists, June, 1678." It
was written by John Humphrey in response to Stillingfleet.
To be reordained to the work of a new charge I am fully
persuaded to be lawful. ... I am one that dare not give
way to the making void my ministry for a dozen years be
fore I was ordained by the Bishop, for that were a heinous
crime for myself (I think) to do; yet will I be content as to
the exercise of my office now to own my authority from him.
I was a minister before in foro Dei & Conscientics. I am
made a minister in foro Ecclesice Anglicance.
Another answer from the same author was made in 1681,
M3

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
entitled "The Peaceable Design Renewed," from which the
following passage is taken:
I apprehend that such men as are most considerate, and
intent upon the interest of God, in what they seek, do, or
did, look upon either of such bills (i.e. Comprehension and
Toleration) as no other than an English Interim, prepara
tive to this higher Concord, and Union of the Bishop with
the Presbyters, according to the Primitive Pattern men
tioned (as soon as more mellow opportunity and well-advised
Piety should administer unto such further Perfection) (p.
29) . We may understand where the core of that EvU we call
Schism is, and that is mainly in the want of that Love and
that Care which the members owe to one another. . . . And
it is upon the Plea of the Greater Duty that the Peaceable
Design doth stand (pp. 29, 32).*
2. CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND ORDERS
IN these citations reference has been made to questions
concerning the validity of non-episcopal ordination; but
underlying these discussions is the more fundamental ques
tion of the self-validation of the sacrament. What espe
cially is the grace inherent in the Eucharist? And what are
the respective relations of the Church, the sacraments, and
the ministerial powers and organs of the Church? In
suggesting this more fundamental discussion (which is all
that our present limits permit), we begin with the Roman
Catholic teaching; for whatever else may be said, that is
always to be found logically consistent. A starting point for
such reconsideration of this whole divisive matter Protes
tants may find in this notable but too much overlooked
declaration of Pope Leo XIII, in the Bull Apostolicce Curice
(September 13, 1896).
?Associated with Humphrey was one named Loeb, the others who
are said to have held the same views I have not been able to ascertain.
These two rare pamphlets are to be found, one in the Yale and the
other in the Harvard library. 144

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND OPINIONS
When one has rightly and seriously made use of the due
form and matter requisite for the offering or conferring of
a sacrament, he is considered by the fact itself to do what
the Church does. On this principle rests the doctrine which
holds that to be a tme sacrament which is conferred accord
ing to the Catholic rite by the ministry of a heretic or an
unbaptized person.
In this utterance the Pope was not referring to baptism.
The context shows that the two sacraments, that of orders
and the Eucharist, were under consideration. Had the word
heretic only been used, the statement would merely have
referred to the doctrine of the Church which was maintained
by Augustine. But the additional word conferred by the
ministry of "an unbaptized person" is significant. For an
unbaptized person has no orders at all. A Roman Catholic
canonist says that this would be understood among Catholics
without the need of qualification, in accordance with the
Roman teaching concerning the priesthood. It would re
quire an extensive excursus into the scholastic theology to
show, as it might be done, how this principle, which is so
positively affirmed by the Pope, is not inconsistent with the
derivative powers of ministry which are canonically con
fined to the priesthood. But with that we are not now con
cerned. It is with this fundamental principle of the inher
ent sanctity of a sacrament that as Protestants we are
concerned. Is it not sound? If so, may it not be for us a
reconciling principle? Consider further these two points in
the Roman doctrine in relation to this question, (i) The
Council of Trent declared:
The Eucharist has this excellent and peculiar thing that
the other sacraments have first the power of sanctifying
when one uses them, whereas in the Eucharist, before being
used there is the Author of sanctity. For the Apostles had
not themselves received the Eucharist from the hand of the
Lord, when he nevertheless affirmed with truth that to be
his own body which he presented (Sess. 13, Ch. iii.).
M5

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
(2) The priesthood is given in, and its institution is
derived from "the institution by Christ of the Holy visible
sacrifice of the Eucharist" (Sess. 23, Ch. i.). The several
orders of the priesthood are exercised as "suitable to the
most well-ordered settlement of the church (Sess. 23, Ch. i.).
Manifestly then the Roman doctrine does not make the
greater sacrament of the Eucharist in itself dependent upon
the lesser sacrament of orders. The point here to be noticed
is the sequence of the powers and organs of the Church;
viz., before all, first the Church; secondly, the sacraments;
thirdly, the powers of ministry; and fourthly, the differ
entiation of orders. The Anglican dictum is the exact
reversal of this sequence, viz., "where no bishop, no true
priests ordained; where no priests, no sacraments; where no
sacraments, no church."*
This pseudo-catholic sequence involves a double non
sequitur: (1) It renders the sacrament of the Eucharist
dependent upon an order of ministry, which it does not
acknowledge to be a sacrament. (2) It puts the first last,
and the last first. On the other hand the Roman Catholic
sequence is logical, developmental, and historical. The
pseudo-catholic principle is from the beginning a principle
of limitation; the Roman doctrine is primarily a principle
of comprehension.
We raise, therefore, to leave open for fundamental con
sideration, this inquiry: Is not this doctrine of the validity
of a sacrament, as thus broadly affirmed by Rome, a Chris
tian principle? Does it not offer a broad basis for inter
communion among all Protestant churches?
? This dictum was so expressed and controverted by Bishop Croft,
in a pamphlet entitled, "The Naked Truth," in 1675. He said,
"Wherefore I beseech you be not too positive in this point lest thereby
you do not only condemn all the reformed churches, but the scripture
and St. Paul also." Quoted by Mason, op. cit., p. 368.

146

IX
APPENDIX
i. THE LAMBETH QUADRILATERAL
FIRST submitted by the House of Bishops at Chicago,
in 1886, and subsequently adopted by the Lambeth
Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1888:
1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
as the revealed Word of God. 2. The Apostles' Creed as the
baptismal Symbol, and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient
statement of the Christian faith. 3. The two Sacraments —
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — ministered with un-
fauing use of Christ's words of institution and of the ele
ments ordained by him. 4. The Historic Episcopate, locally
adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying
needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the
Unity of His Church.
2. FOR A WORLD CONFERENCE
AT the last Lambeth Conference, in 1908, the Anglican
.. Bishops in an Encyclical Letter declared: "We must
consequently desire not compromise, but comprehension, not
uniformity but unity." A resolution was adopted by them
recommending that "meetings of ministers and laymen of
different Christian bodies be held at different centres to
promote a cordial mutual understanding." In response to
that action the General Conference of the Congregational
Churches of Connecticut, at its meeting in November of
the same year, appointed a committee to further such con
ferences, and to report at its next annual meeting concerning
147

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
the relations of the different Christian bodies. Pursuant to
that resolution an informal preliminary conference of the
committee with some leading representatives of the Episco
pal Church was held at Hartford, May 5, 1909, at which it
is of interest to note that the late Dr. William R. Hunting
ton was present, and gave us what were almost his last
words of counsel and courage in his ministry for "The Peace
of the Church." As a result of this interchange of views cer
tain methods of approach towards unity were suggested as
possible, among them such further mutual action as might
be "necessary to render the existing ministry of other
churches regular according to the Episcopal order, and pos
sessed of full authorization to minister the sacrament in
Episcopal churches."
At the meeting of the National Council of Congregational
Churches in 19 10, the next after the Lambeth Conference, a
resolution was passed by a rising vote in response to the
Encyclical of the Anglican bishops containing in part these
words: "We on our part would seek, so much as lieth in us,
for the unity and peace of the whole household of faith: and
forgetting not that our forefathers whose orderly ordained
ministry is our inheritance, were not willingly separatists,
we would most loyally contribute the precious things of
which we as Congregationalists are stewards to the Church
of the future; therefore the Council would put on record its
appreciation of the spirit and its concurrence in the purpose
of this expression of the Lambeth Conference, and voice its
earnest hope for closer fellowship with the Episcopal Church
in work and worship." The Council appointed a special
committee "to consider any overtures that may come to our
denomination as a result of these conferences."
By a singular and auspicious coincidence this action of
the Congregational Council was received by the Episcopal
General Convention, which was then in session, just after it
had taken its notable action to appoint a "Joint Commission
to arrange for a World Conference on Faith and Order."
148

APPENDIX
Almost simultaneously the Disciples of Christ had ap
pointed a Commission on Unity, and soon after the Execu
tive Committee of the Alliance of Reformed Churches hold
ing the Presbyterian System signified their approval. The
preparatory work necessary to lay this proposal of a World
Conference before Christian communions throughout the
world was approaching its conclusion, and plans for con
vening the World Conference were being considered — and
then came the war.
The Episcopal Commission, soon after their appointment,
had sent a deputation to England to secure the co-operation
of the Church of England. The two archbishops appointed
a committee on the World Conference as a result of this
visitation. Subsequently the Episcopal and other commis
sions associated with them sent a deputation of non-episco
pal clergymen to England to secure the support of the Non
conformist churches. They received a gracious invitation
from the Archbishops' Committee to meet with them — the
first conference perhaps that has been held between official
representatives of the Church of England and non-episcopal
communions since Tillotson 's time, two hundred and more
years ago. As a further and consequential result of this
succession of steps, conferences have since been held at dif
ferent intervals between the Archbishops' Committee and
representatives of the Nonconformist churches; in 191 5 they
published through a sub-committee the following statement
indicating a large measure of substantial agreement and also
affording material for further investigation and considera
tion.

149

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
3. FIRST INTERIM STATEMENT OF JOINT
ANGLICAN AND NONCONFORMIST
COMMITTEE
PART I. A STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT ON
MATTERS OF FAITH
WE, who belong to different Christian Communions,
and are engaged in the discussion of questions of
Faith and Order, desire to affirm our agreement upon certain
foundation tmths as the basis of a spiritual and rational
creed and life for all mankind. We express them as follows:
(1) As Christians we believe that, while there is some
knowledge of God to be found among all races of men
and some measure of divine grace and help is present to
all, a unique, progressive and redemptive revelation of
Himself was given by God to the Hebrew people through
the agency of inspired prophets, "in many parts and in
many manners," and that this revelation reaches its culmi
nation and completeness in One Who is more than a
prophet, Who is the Incarnate Son of God, our Saviour
and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
(2) This distinctive revelation, accepted as the word
of God, is the basis of the life of the Christian Church and
is intended to be the formative influence upon the mind
and character of the individual believer.
(3) This word of God is contained in the Old and New
Testaments and constitutes the permanent spiritual value
of the Bible.
(4) The root and centre of this revelation, as intel
lectually interpreted, consists in a positive and highly
distinctive doctrine of God — His nature, character and
will. From this doctrine of God follows a certain sequence
of doctrines concerning creation, human nature and des-
150

APPENDIX
tiny, sin, individual and racial, redemption through the
incarnation of the Son of God and His atoning death and
resurrection, the mission and operation of the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Trinity, the Church, the last things, and Chris
tian life and duty, individual and social: all these cohere
with and follow from this doctrine of God.
(5) Since Christianity offers a historical revelation of
God, the coherence and sequence of Christian doctrine
involve a necessary synthesis of idea and fact such as is
presented to us in the New Testament and in the Apostles'
and Nicene Creeds: and these Creeds both in their state
ments of historical fact and in their statements of doctrine
affirm essential elements of the Christian faith, as con
tained in Scripture, which the Church could never aban
don without abandoning its basis in the word of God.
(6) We hold that there is no contradiction between
the acceptance of the miracles recited in the Creeds and
the acceptance of the principle of order in nature as as
sumed in scientific inquiry, and we hold equally that the
acceptance of miracles is not forbidden by the historical
evidence candidly and impartially investigated by critical
methods.

PART II. A STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT ON
MATTERS RELATING TO ORDER
With thankfulness to the Head of the Church for the
spirit of unity He has shed abroad in our hearts we go on to
express our common conviction on the following matters:
(1) That it is the purpose of our Lord that believers
in Him should be, as in the beginning they were, one
visible society — His body with many members — which
in every age and place should maintain the communion
151

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
of saints in the unity of the Spirit and should be capable
of a common witness and a common activity.
(2) That our Lord ordained, in addition to the preach
ing of His Gospel, the Sacraments of Baptism and of the
Lord's Supper, as not only declaratory symbols, but also
effective channels of His grace and gifts for the salvation
and sanctification of men, and that these Sacraments being
essentially social ordinances were intended to affirm the
obligation of corporate fellowship as well as individual
confession of Him.
(3) That our Lord, in addition to the bestowal of the
Holy Spirit in a variety of gifts and graces upon the
whole Church, also conferred upon it by the self-same
Spirit a Ministry of manifold gifts and functions, to main
tain the unity and continuity of its witness and work.

PART III. A STATEMENT OF DIFFERENCES IN
RELATION TO MATTERS OF ORDER WHICH
REQUIRE FURTHER STUDY AND
DISCUSSION
Fidelity to our convictions and sincerity in their expres
sion compel us to recognize that there still remain differences
in respect of these matters:
(1) As regards the nature of this visible Society, how
far it involves uniformity or allows variety in polity, creed
and worship.
(2) As regards the Sacraments — the conditions, objec
tive and subjective, in their ministration and reception on
which their validity depends.
(3) As regards the Ministry — whether it derives its
authority through an episcopal or a presbyteral succession
or through the community of believers or by a combina
tion of these. 152

APPENDIX
We desire to report accordingly and we submit:
( i ) That this report be made known to the public.
(2) That further enquiry should be directed to exam
ining the implications in the matter agreed, and to the
possibility of lessening or removing the differences by
explanation. (Signed)
G. W. Bath: & Well: (Chairman) .
E. Winton: J. Scott Lidgett.
C. Oxon: J. H. Shakespeare.
W. T. Davtson. C. Anderson Scott.
A. E. Garvie. Eugene Stock.
Tissington Tatlow (Hon. Sec.) .
February, 191 6.

4. THE SECOND INTERIM STATEMENT
IN further pursuit of the main purpose, the sub-committee
was reappointed and enlarged. After mature and pro
longed consideration it is hereby issuing its Second Interim
Report under the direction of the Conference as a whole,
but on the understanding that the members of the sub
committee alone are to be held responsible for the substance
of the document.
In issuing our Second Interim Report we desire to pre
vent possible misconceptions regarding our intentions. 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 Conference on Faith and Order. We
are exploring the ground in order to discover the ways of
approach to the questions 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
153

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
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 interpretation. We felt
deeply, however, that we could not let the matter rest there;
but that we must in conference 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 Chris
tian nations has brought home to us with a greater poignancy
the disastrous results of the divisions which prevail among
Christians, inasmuch as they have hindered that growth of
mutual understanding 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
co-operation of the Christian Churches for moral influence
and social service, though such co-operation might with great
advantage be carried much further than it is at present; it
could only be fully realized through community of worship,
154

APPENDIX
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 visible
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
Churches. The first fact which we agree to acknowledge is that the
position of Episcopacy in the greater part of Christendom,
as the recognized organ of the unity and continuity 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 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 response to fresh apprehensions of divine
tmth to give expression to certain types of Christian ex
perience, aspiration, and fellowship, and to secure rights of
the Christian people which had been neglected or denied.
In view of these facts, if the visible unity so much de
sired within the Church, and so necessary for the testimony
and influence of the Church in the world, is ever to be real
ized, it is imperative that the Episcopal and Non-Episcopal
155

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Communions shall approach one another, not by the method
of human compromise, but in correspondence 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 enrichment 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 responsibility, to
submit for the serious consideration of all the parts of a
divided Christendom what seem to us the necessary condi
tions of any possibility of reunion:
i. 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 Episcopate 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 practice of Episcopacy and it so remains
in many Episcopal Communions today.
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 taken for
granted as the acceptance of any such theory is not now re
quired of ministers of the Church of England. It would no
doubt be necessary before any arrangement for corporate re
union could be made to discuss 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
156

APPENDIX
value to themselves but of value to the Church as a whole.
Accordingly we hoped and desired that each of these Com
munions would bring its own distinctive contribution, not
only to the common life of the Church, but also to its meth
ods of organization, and that all that is true in the expe
rience 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
prophetic 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 conditions 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 agree
ment, 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 it
must be felt by all good-hearted Christians as an intolerable
burden to find themselves permanently separated in respect
of religious worship and communion from those in whose
characters and lives they recognize the surest evidences of
the indwelling Spirit; and because, 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.
157

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
(Signed)
G. W. Bath and Wells: W. B. Selbie.
(Chairman). J. H. Shakespeare.
E. Winton: Eugene Stock.
C. Oxon: William Temple.
W. T. Davison. Tissington Tatlow,
A. E. Garvte. (Hon. Sec).
H. L. Goudge. H. G. Wood.
J. Scott Lidgett.
March, 191 8.
5. PROPOSALS FOR AN APPROACH TOWARD
UNITY BY A CONFERENCE OF EPISCO
PALIANS AND CONGREGATIONALISTS
THE undersigned, members of the Protestant Episco
pal Church and of Congregational Churches, with
out any official sanction and purely on our private initiative,
have conferred with each other, partly by correspondence
and partly by meeting, with a view to discover a method
by which a practical approach towards making clear and
evident the visible unity of believers in our Lord according
to His will, might be made. For there can be no question
that such is our Lord's will. The Church itself, in the midst
of its divisions, bears convincing witness to it. "There is
one Body and one Spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism."
There has never been, there can never be, more than one
Body or one Baptism. On this we are agreed. There is
one fellowship of the Baptized, made one by grace, and in
every case by the self-same grace. And the unity given and
symbolized by Baptism is in its very nature visible.
We are agreed that it is our Lord's purpose that believers
in Him should be one visible society. Into such a society,
which we recognize as the Holy Catholic Church, they are
initiated by Baptism; whereby they are admitted to fellow-
158

APPENDIX
ship with Him and with one another. The unity which is
essential to his Church's effective witness and work in the
world must express and maintain this fellowship. It can
not be fully realized without community of worship, faith,
and order, including common participation in the Lord's
Supper. Such unity would be compatible with a rich diver
sity in life and worship.
We have not discussed the origin of the episcopate his
torically or its authority doctrinally; but we agree to ac
knowledge that the recognized position of the episcopate in
the greater part of Christendom as the normal nucleus of
the Church's ministry and as the organ of the unity and
continuity 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.
We also agree to acknowledge that Christian Churches
not accepting the episcopal order have been used by the
Holy Spirit in his work of enlightening the world, convert
ing sinners, and perfecting saints. They came into being
through reactions from grave abuses in the Church at the
time of their origin, and were led in response to fresh appre
hensions of divine truth to give expression to certain neces
sary and permanent types of Christian experience, aspira
tion and fellowship, and to secure rights of Christian people
which had been neglected or denied.
No Christian community is involved in the necessity of
disowning its past; but it should bring its own distinctive
contribution not only to the common life of the Church,
but also to its methods of organization. Many customs and
institutions which have been developed in separate communi
ties may be preserved within the larger unity. What we
desire to see is not gmdging concession, but a willing
acceptance of the treasures of each for the common enrich
ment of the united Church*
? These sentences are adopted in part from the English Interim
statement. 159

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
To give full effect to these principles in relation to the
churches to which we respectively belong requires some
form of corporate union between them. We greatly desire
such corporate union. We also are conscious of the diffi
culties in the way of bringing it about, including the neces
sity for corporate action, even with complete good will on
both sides. In this situation we believe that a practical ap
proach toward eventual union may be made by the estab
lishment of intercommunion in particular instances. It is
evident to us that corporate union between bodies whose
members have become so related will thereby be facilitated.
Mutual understanding and sympathy will strongly reinforce
the desire to be united in a common faith and order, and will
make clearer how the respective contributions of each com
munity can best be made available to all.
We recognize as a fact, without discussing whether it
is based upon sound foundations, that in the episcopal
Churches an apprehension exists that if episcopally con
ferred orders were added to the authority which non-episco
pal ministers have received from their own communions,
such orders might not be received and used in all cases in
the sense or with the intention with which they are con
ferred. Upon this point there ought to be no room for
doubt. The sense or intention in which any particular order
of the ministry is conferred or accepted is the sense or inten
tion in which it is held in the Universal Church. In con
ferring or in accepting such ordination neither the bishop
ordaining nor the minister ordained should be understood to
impugn thereby the efficacy of the minister's previous
ministry. The like principle applies to the ministration of sacra
ments. The minister acts not merely as the representative
of the particular congregation then present, but in a larger
sense he represents the Church Universal; and his inten
tion and meaning should be our Lord's intention and mean
ing as delivered to and held by the Catholic Church. To
1 60

APPENDIX
this end such sacramental matter and form should be used
as shall exhibit the intention of the Church.
When communion has been established between the or
daining bishop of the Episcopal Church and the ordained
minister of another communion, appropriate measures ought
to be devised to maintain it by participating in the sacra
ment of the Lord's Supper and by mutual counsel and co
operation. We are not unmindful that occasions may arise when it
might become necessary to take cognizance of supposed
error of faith or of conduct, and suitable provision ought to
be made for such cases.
In view of the limitations imposed by the law and prac
tice of the Episcopal Church upon its bishops with regard
to ordination, and the necessity of obtaining the approval
of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to the
project we have devised, a form of canonical sanction has
been prepared which is appended as a schedule to this state
ment. We who are members of the Episcopal Church are
prepared to recommend its enactment. We who are mem
bers of Congregational Churches regard it as a wise basis
upon which in the interests of Church unity, and without
sacrifice on either side, the supplementary ordination herein
contemplated might be accepted.
It is our conviction that such procedure as we here out
Une is in accordance, as far as it goes, with our Lord's pur
poses for his Church; and our fond hope is that it would
contribute to heal the Church's divisions. In the mission
field it might prove of great value in uniting the work. In
small communities it might put an end to the familiar
scandal of more churches than the spiritual needs of the
people require. In the army and navy, chaplains so or
dained could minister acceptably to the adherents of Chris
tian bodies who feel compunctions about the regularity of
a non-episcopal ministry. In all places an example of a
practical approach to Christian unity, with the recognition
161

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
of diversities in organization and in worship, would be held
up before the world. The will to unity would be strength
ened, prejudices would be weakened, and the way would
become open in the light of experience to bring about a
more complete organic unity of Christian Churches.
While this plan is the result of conference in which mem
bers of only one denomination of non-episcopal Churches
have taken part, it is comprehensive enough to include in its
scope ministers of all other non-episcopal communions; and
we earnestly invite their sympathetic consideration and con
currence. New York, March 12, 19 19.

Boyd Vincent, Bishop of
Southern Ohio
Philip M. Rhinelander,
Bishop of Pennsylvania
William H. Day, Moder
ator of Congregational Na
tional Council
Hubert C. Herring, Secre
tary of National Council
Wm. Cabell Brown, Bishop
of Virginia
Hughell Fosbroke, Dean
of the Gen. Theol. Semi
nary
Edmund S. Rousmaniere,
Dean of St. Paul's Cathe
dral, Boston
William T. Manning, Rec
tor of Trinity Church,
New York

Charles L. Slattery, Rec
tor of Grace Church, New
York
George Craig Stewart,
Rector of St. Luke's
Church, Evanston, III.
Howard B. St. George,
Professor in Nashotah
Seminary
Francis Lynde Stetson
Robert H. Gardiner
George Zabriskie, Chancel
lor of the Diocese of New
York
Hon. Sec, 23 Gramercy
Park, New York
Charles F. Carter, Chair
man of Ex. Committee of
National Council

162

APPENDIX
Williston Walker, of the Raymond Calkins, Chair-
Commission on Organiza- man of Congregational
tion Commission on Unity
Robert S. Smith, of Com- Arthur F. Pratt, Sec. of
mission on Unity Commission on Unity
William E. Barton, of William T. McElveen, of
Commission on Organiza- Commission on Unity
tion

Newman Smyth, of Com
mission on Unity
Hon. Sec, 54 Trumbull
Council Street, New Haven, Conn.

Nehemiah Boynton, Ex. mission on Unity
Moderator of National Hon. Sec, 54 Trumbull

SCHEDULE
Form of Proposed Canon
§ I. In case any minister who has not received episcopal
ordination shall desire to be ordained by a Bishop of this
Church to the Diaconate and to the Priesthood without
giving up or denying his membership or his ministry in the
Communion to which he belongs, the Bishop of the Diocese
or Missionary District in which he lives, with the advice
and consent of the Standing Committee or the Council of
Advice, may confirm and ordain him.
§ II. The minister desiring to be so ordained shall satisfy
the Bishop that he has resided in the United States at least
one year; that he has been duly baptized with water in the
name of the Trinity; that he holds the historic faith of the
Church as contained in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene
Creed; that there is no sufficient objections on grounds
physical, mental, moral or spiritual; and that the ecclesias
tical authority to which he is subject in the Communion to
which he belongs consents to such ordination.
§ III. At the time of his ordination the person to be
ordained shall subscribe and make in the presence of the
163

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
Bishop a declaration that he believes the Holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and
to contain all things necessary to salvation; that in the min
istration of Baptism he will unfailingly baptize with water
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost; and (if he is being ordained to the Priesthood) that
in the celebration of the Holy Communion he will invariably
use the elements of bread and wine, and will include in the
service the words and acts of our Lord in the institution of
the Sacrament, the Lord's Prayer, and (unless one of these
Creeds has been used in the service immediately preceding
the celebration of the Holy Communion) the Apostles', or the
Nicene Creed as the symbol of the faith of the Holy Catho
lic Church; that when thereto invited by the Bishop of this
Church having jurisdiction in the place where he lives, he
will (unless unavoidably prevented) meet with such Bishop
for Communion and for counsel and co-operation; and that
he will hold himself answerable to the Bishop of this Church
having jurisdiction in the place where he lives, or, if there
be no such Bishop, to the Presiding Bishop of this Church,
in case he be called in question with respect to error of
faith or of conduct.
§ IV. In case a person so ordained be charged with error
of faith or of conduct he shall have reasonable notice of the
charge and reasonable opportunity to be heard, and the
procedure shall be similar to the procedure in the case of
a clergyman of this Church charged with the like offense.
The sentence shall always be pronounced by the Bishop and
shall be such as a clergyman of this Church would be liable
to. It shall be certified to the ecclesiastical authority to
which the defendant is responsible in any other Communion.
If he shall have been tried before a tribunal of the Com
munion in which he has exercised his ministry, the judgment
of such tribunal proceeding in the due exercise of its juris
diction shall be taken as conclusive evidence of facts thereby
adjudged. 164

APPENDIX
§ V. A minister so ordained may officiate in a Diocese
or Missionary District of this Church when licensed by the
ecclesiastical authority thereof, but he shall not become the
Rector or a minister of any parish or congregation of this
Church until he shall have subscribed and made to the
Ordinary a declaration in writing whereby he shall solemnly
engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline and worship of
this Church. Upon his making such declaration and being
duly elected Rector or minister of a parish or congregation
of this Church, and complying with the canons of this Church
and of the Diocese or Missionary District in that behalf, he
shall become for all purposes a Minister of this Church.

6. PROPOSALS FOR ORGANIC UNITY INITI
ATED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
U. S. A.
THE General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
191 8 adopted a resolution calling for a conference with
other Protestant churches to consider and to prepare a plan
for organic Church union. In response to that invitation
representatives of the Presbyterian and seventeen other
churches met in December of 1918 and adopted, unani
mously, a report, of which the substantial parts are as
follows: In view of the wide opportunity and solemn obligation of
the hour, the following action is taken:
1. That the members of this Conference from each com
munion, whether present in official or personal capacity, be
asked as soon as possible to appoint representatives on an
Ad Interim Committee to carry forward the movement
toward Organic Union here initiated.
2. The committee shall be composed of one member
165

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
from each communion, and one additional member for each
500,000 communicants, or major fraction thereof. In addi
tion, the Foreign Missions Conference and the Home Mis
sion Council shall each be asked to name one member.
3. The same privilege of membership on the Committee
shall be extended to evangelical denominations not repre
sented 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 dele
gations, or otherwise, to the national bodies of all the evan
gelical 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, including 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 Committee
to proceed with freedom at every point. As of possible
166

APPENDIX
assistance, however, in the deliberations, the Conference
expresses its present judgment as to certain aspects of the
problem to be faced.
i. 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 tradition, temperament or
taste, whatever their relationships racially or historically.
3. The Conference regards with deep interest and warm
approbation all the movements of our time towards closer
co-operative relations between communions, 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 main
tain sympathetic relations with them, and to regard with
satisfaction any reinforcement 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 state
ment 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 con-
167

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
fuse the term "federal" as thus employed, with this mean
ing when used to signify "associated" or "co-operative."
The Ad interim Committee, as called for by this action,
has been appointed, and they are now engaged in preparing
a plan of unity to present to an interdenominational council.

7. THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT
THERE has been laid before the various mission
boards, executive commissions and officials of the
evangelical communions of North America a plan for united
study and united effort to assure the support of the mission
work of those communions at home and abroad. This plan
will be submitted to the national bodies of the churches
at their meetings during the spring and fall of 19 19.
The main features of the plan are four in number:
1. A United Study of the World Field. County by
county in this country and mission by mission in foreign
lands, it is proposed that the exact facts be discovered to
the end that the needs of each community and region may
be appraised and the whole task of the whole church put
in clear light and due proportion.
2. A United Budget. On the basis of the world sur
vey it is proposed that a single joint budget be made, every
item of which shall approve itself to the judgment of the
several mission boards, so far as it relates to the work of
each board, and have the approval of a strong interdenomi
national committee aided by experts in the various fields
covered, this committee to review and harmonize the details.
While this budget will be for a single year, it will take
account of the needs of a five year period.
3. A United Appeal. During a given number of days
at some point in 1920 it is proposed that the fifty million
people constituting the Protestant constituency of America
be asked, community by community, to underwrite the
168

APPENDIX
united budget for the year ahead, payment of pledges to be
made week by week through customary church channels.
There will be a united treasury to care for undesignated
gifts. 4. A United Program of Work. It is proposed that this
plan shall carry the steadily growing co-operation of recent
years in the mission field on to the point of the most com
plete co-ordination which the conditions of our separate
organizations permit. Funds secured will be expended with
detailed regard to the requirements of fraternal co-operation.
A preliminary organization has been effected to carry out
these proposals, a large General Committee from different
parts of the country has been formed, and conferences are
being held throughout the nation to make known the plans
and purposes and to secure general support of this move
ment.

8. PREPARATION FOR CONVENING THE
WORLD CONFERENCE ON FAITH
AND ORDER
/IN Episcopal delegation has carried its invitation to all
f\ the churches in continental Europe that could be
visited since the armistice, and they have received generally
favorable responses. Plans and means for the convening of
the Conference will now be considered and the remaining
task of gathering together so great a representative body
from all peoples of the earth be finally accomplished. It
opens possibilities of a League of Churches of all nations
such as could not have been anticipated when the plan was
first conceived.
The movements above noticed relate to proposals for
some form of corporate union. Besides these, numerous
co-operative movements, successful community services, and
169

APPROACHES TOWARDS CHURCH UNITY
union of churches in many localities have taken place; the
War Commissions of the different churches have co-operated
in the appointment of chaplains, and Christian work in the
camps; the Federal Council of the Churches has proved to
be an efficient means of unification and support in these
good works; all together they have served to create a gen
eral desire for Church unity and a belief in its practicability.
It is from no lack of appreciation of what has thus been
accomplished in the unification in work of the Christian
forces of the country, that all these co-operative works are
not more specifically noticed here; to give an account at all
adequate of them would require an entire volume.

170

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