BX 8 .A7 
 
 Ashworth, Robert Archibal 
 1871- 
 
 The union of Christian 
 
 45 
 
\ 
 
IFuniJ ®onk No. 13 
 
 /' 
 
 The Union of Christian 
 Forces in America 
 
 ROBERT A. ASHWORTH, D. D. 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, MILWAUKEE, WIS.; MEMBER 
 OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES 
 OF CHRIST IN AMERICA 
 
 A PRIZE BOOK 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION 
 1816 Chestnut Street 
 
Copyright, iqis, by the 
 American Sunday-School Union 
 
PUBLISHER’S NOTE 
 
 This book is issued by the American Sunday-School Union 
 under the John C. Green Income Fund. It won the prize of 
 $1000 in a competition for the best manuscript on the sub- 
 ject of Cheistian Unity. The provisions of the fund author- 
 ize the Union to choose the subject, — ^which must always be 
 germane to the object of the Society, — and to control the 
 copyright, thus reducing the price of the book. In this way 
 works of a high order of merit may be put into circulation at 
 a reasonable price. The author is given large liberty in the 
 literary form, style, and treatment of the subject. 
 
 The book treats a theme which is at present of universal 
 interest throughout Christendom. That it was the prize-win- 
 ner in a competition in which many able and scholarly manu- 
 scripts were submitted is a sufficient proof of its exceptional 
 merit. The author has served as President of the Federa- 
 tion of Churches in his own city, and now represents his 
 denomination on the Executive Committee of the Federal 
 Council of Churches of Christ in America. 
 
 He approaches his subject, therefore, not merely as an 
 interested observer and student of conditions of church life 
 in America to-day, but as a leader in the movement to har- 
 monize differences and promote unity through mutual under- 
 standing, sympathy, and co-operation. His book is a valu- 
 able contribution toward solving the problem and furthering 
 the movement which it treats. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https;//archive.org/details/unionofchristianOOashw_0 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is the expression of the writer’s very earnest 
 conviction that for the present no progress will be made in 
 the direction of Christian Unity by a discussion of denomina- 
 tional differences, but that the need of the hour is a fuller 
 development of that co-operation in practical tasks which is 
 already possible among Christian bodies, despite doctrinal 
 or other disagreements. Such co-operation will promote 
 mutual acquaintance and esteem, and these in turn will evoke 
 Christian love; and if love, when it is perfected, cannot draw 
 Christians together into the unity of a single Church, it is 
 hopeless to expect that any other motive whatsoever will 
 ^suffice to do it. Thus the most hopeful program for the 
 I present is co-operation in common tasks; the n federatio n: to 
 \be followed, if it be God’s will, by organic unity. The proc- 
 ess cannot be hurried, neither can the order of the steps in it 
 be reversed. This is the era of federation. Until the possi- 
 bilities of the federafiw^pnnciple are thoroughly tested, and 
 the spirit of it thoroughly permeates the divided bodies of 
 Christendom, no further step can be taken. 
 
 'The author desires to express his very hearty appreciation 
 of the assistance rendered by his friends, the Rev. F. W. C. 
 Meyer and Mr. H. C. Henderson; also by Rev. James 
 McConaughy, Editor of Publications of the American 
 Sunday-School Union, after the acceptance of the manu- 
 script. Their examination of it led to many helpful sug- 
 gestions. He sends forth this book with the earnest prayer 
 that it may make some slight contribution toward the con- 
 summation of that unity of the Church for which the Lord 
 of all Christians prayed. 
 
 Robert A. Ashworth. 
 
:i ;'■> Ji 
 
 ymip. 
 
 < 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Expense and Waste of Christian Dis- 
 union 13 
 
 II. The New Testament Ideal of Christian Unity 
 
 AND What Became of It 39 
 
 III. The Passing of the Sectarian Spirit 61 
 
 IV. The Growth of the Spirit of Christian Unity 81 
 
 V. Christian Unity Through Federation 103 
 
 VI. The Union of Christian Forces in Country 
 
 AND Village 125 
 
 VII. Co-operation in Home Missions 159 
 
 VIII. Co-operation on the Foreign Mission Field. 185 
 
 IX. Organic Church Unity 213 
 
 X. The Basis of Organic Unity 239 
 
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe 
 on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as 
 thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: 
 that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the 
 glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they 
 may be one, even cls we are one; I in them, and thou in me, 
 that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know 
 that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. 
 
 —John 17:20-23, R. V. 
 
THE EXPENSE AND WASTE OF 
 CHRISTIAN DISUNION 
 
Protestantism divided and subdivided. — ^The multiplicity 
 of denominations. — Its eflfect in loss of spiritual fellowship. — 
 An equal loss in efficiency. — Over-churching and its effects in 
 waste of equipment and unnecessary expense of maintenance. 
 ■ — The inadequate salaries of ministers. — Loss in prestige and 
 leadership. — A divided Church unable to render the service 
 to be expected from it. 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN 
 FORCES IN AMERICA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EXPENSE AISTD WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 
 
 The most pressing problem of the Church in our 
 day is that of Christian Unity: beside it all others 
 fade into insignificance. The energies of Christen- 
 dom are being frittered away in the competitions, 
 controversies, jealousies, and friction engendered by 
 its “unhappy divisions,” and this in the face of such 
 demands upon the Church and such opportunities 
 for service as have never been presented before in 
 its history. This era, that might be the most 
 glorious in the career of the Church, may be com- 
 pelled to record the story of its degeneration and 
 defeat. The loss of influence that institutional 
 Christianity is suffering to-day may be ascribed to 
 many causes, but to none is it due in so large a 
 measure as to disunion. The most difficult situa- 
 tions which the Church is called upon to meet, it 
 
14 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 has itself created: its worst enemies are of its own 
 household. There is no task confronting it any- 
 where in the world which the Church might not 
 accomplish if it could approach that task with a 
 united front; and there is none to which it is fully 
 equal so long as its forces are divided and its ener- 
 gies dissipated. 
 
 The first step in a constructive program for the 
 reunion of Christendom is the frank recognition of 
 the lengths to which the multiplication of sects has 
 gone, and of the serious evils that flow therefrom. 
 It is a futile waste of time to try to fix the blame for 
 the existing situation. “Protestantism,” Dr. James 
 H. Ecob once said, “is divided and subdivided 
 until it cannot count its own disjecta membra. 
 This condition should be taken upon the conscience 
 and heart of every serious man and woman as a 
 burden and a shame.” Another has declared that 
 the divisions of Christendom might be classified 
 into “sects and insects.” But whatever truth 
 there may be in such statements, sectarianism will 
 never be scolded or ridiculed out of existence. It 
 was not mere perversity that called any one of the 
 denominations into being. Every denomination 
 sincerely believes itself to have a right to be and to 
 propagate its principles, even though to it every 
 other may seem to be without excuse. The mistakes 
 of the fathers were honestly made; and if we have 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 15 
 
 a wider vision than they and are ready now to move 
 out of the “low-vaulted past” and to set our hands 
 to the building of a loftier temple, little is to be 
 gained by stopping to rake over the ashes of dead 
 controversies to discover how the foundations of 
 earlier structures were laid. We may be quite 
 willing to admit that the sectarian spirit has ren- 
 dered valuable service to the cause of the Kingdom 
 in the past, and yet be thoroughly convinced that 
 its days of vigor and usefulness are gone and that 
 it is ready for the grave, and that denominational- 
 ism, as we know it, must be radically transformed 
 if it is to meet the demands of the present day. 
 
 Knowledge of religious conditions existing in 
 America to-day must convince even the firmest 
 advocate of individualism and independence in 
 religion that they have exceeded the bounds of 
 liberty. Those who desire the statistics may con- 
 sult the authoritative work of Dr. H. K. Carroll, 
 The Religious Forces of the United States.^ 
 
 “The first impression one gets in studying the 
 results of the census,” says Dr. Carroll, “is that , 
 there is an infinite variety of religions in the United 
 States. There are churches small and churches 
 great, churches white and churches black, churches 
 high and low, orthodox and heterodox, Christian 
 and pagan. Catholic and Protestant, Liberal and 
 
 > P. xui 2. 
 
16 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Conservative, Calvinistic and Arminian, native 
 and foreign, Trinitarian and Unitarian. All phases 
 of thought are represented by them, all possible 
 theologies, all varieties of polity, ritual, usage, 
 forms of worship. . . . This we speak of as ‘the 
 land of the free.’ No man has a property in any 
 other man, or a right to dictate his religious prin- 
 ciples or denominational attachment. No church 
 has a claim on the State, and the State has no claim 
 on any church. We scarcely appreciate our ad- 
 vantages. Our citizens are free to choose a resi- 
 dence in any one of 50 states and territories, and to 
 move from one to another as often as they have a 
 mind to. There is even a wider range for choice 
 and change in religion. One may be a pagan, a Jew, 
 or a Christian, or each in turn. If he is a pagan, he 
 may worship in one of the numerous temples de- 
 voted to Buddha; if a Jew, he may be of the Ortho- 
 dox or Reformed variety; if a Christian, he may 
 select any one of 125 or 130 different kinds, or join 
 every one of them in turn. He may be six kinds 
 of an Adventist, seven kinds of a Catholic, twelve 
 kinds of a Mennonite or Presbyterian, thirteen 
 kinds of a Baptist, sixteen kinds of a Lutheran, or 
 seventeen kinds of a Methodist. He may be a 
 member of any one of 143 denominations, or of all 
 in succession. If none of these suits him, he still 
 has a choice among 150 separate and independent 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 17 
 
 congregations, M^hich have no denominational name, 
 creed, or connection.” 
 
 It affords a degree of comfort, however, to be 
 assured that these rainbow-hued varieties of Chris- 
 tian practice may be reduced by a process of syn- 
 thesis to a more manageable number. “A closer 
 scrutiny of the list shows that many of these 143 
 denominations differ only in name. Without a 
 single change in doctrine or polity, the 18 Methodist 
 bodies could be reduced to three or four; the 12 
 Presbyterian to three; the 12 Mennonite to two; 
 and so on. The differences in many cases are only 
 sectional or historical. The slavery question was 
 the cause of not a few divisions, and matters of 
 discipline were responsible for a larger number. 
 Arranging the denominations in groups or families, 
 and counting as one family each of the 12 Mennon- 
 ite, the 17 Methodist, the 13 Baptist bodies, and 
 so on, we have, instead of 143, only 42 titles. In 
 other words, if there could be a consolidation of 
 each denominational group, the reproach of our 
 division would be largely taken away.”^ 
 
 That the splintering process from which the cause 
 of religion has suffered has not altogether ceased is 
 indicated in the bulletin of the Department of Com- 
 merce and Labor of figures gathered in 1906, which 
 reports that during the sixteen years subsequent to 
 
 ^ Dr. H. K. Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States, p. xv. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 the census of 1890, 41 new divisions were added to 
 the unhappy list. There is, however, here also a 
 gleam of comfort in that many of these are not 
 Christian, and others can hardly be called churches, 
 so small are they and insignificant. 
 
 The facts, however interpreted, are serious 
 enough. There is no single characteristic of organ- 
 ized Christianity which has not served as a cause of 
 division. In polity the churches are known as con- 
 gregational, presbyterial, and episcopal. The ques- 
 tion of ministerial orders has been a fruitful cause 
 of division. The Roman Catholic Church admits 
 the validity of the orders of the Greek Orthodox 
 Church, but there is no fellowship between them. 
 The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches 
 unite in denying validity to the orders of the Angli- 
 can and Protestant Episcopal Churches, while the 
 latter refuse to recognize the orders of any 
 churches except those that refuse to recognize theirs. 
 Churches divide on the observance of ritual and on 
 the manner of observance and significance of the 
 ordinances. It is among the ironies of history that 
 the ordinance of the Supper of our Lord, wherein 
 it was intended that disciples should manifest their 
 unity about a common table, has been a principal 
 occasion and cause of division. 
 
 Should other sources of disagreement fail, there 
 remain dogma and creed which may safely be de- 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 19 
 
 pended upon to keep the followers of Jesus apart. 
 It would be instructive to count the separate doc- 
 trines that are to be found in the creeds of Chris- 
 tendom, and to point out the manner in which the 
 simple truths of the apostolic Church have taken on 
 complexity with the years, and to note how, with 
 every advance in the intricacy of belief, there has 
 been a further scattering of believers. A few years 
 ago there appeared a dispatch from Peru, announc- 
 ing that the traditional treasure of the Incas, a 
 sum of vast amount, had been discovered at Challa- 
 catta. The item concluded with the statement, 
 “The discoverers are now quarreling over the 
 treasure.” Thus has the company of the disciples 
 of our Lord been prevented from applying the wealth 
 of the gospel to the needs of man by their disputes 
 over its possession and administration. 
 
 For the disunion that has characterized the his- 
 tory of Protestantism we are paying the penalty, — 
 a penalty so severe that it threatens to bankrupt 
 the resources of the Church. As a consequence 
 of such disunion, organized Christianity has suf- 
 fered irreparably, in the first place, from the loss of 
 spiritual felloivship. There is much that the 
 churches could learn from one another if they 
 would. Every great denomination that has given 
 proof of its endurance, and that has gathered into 
 its fold large numbers of people, must have its pecu- 
 
20 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 liar virtues. If it has been able to minister to the 
 spiritual needs of the multitude of its adherents, it 
 must possess spiritual vitality and at least a modicum 
 of spiritual truth. One does not gather figs of 
 thistles. It is impossible to believe that God could 
 so largely use any body of believers as he has used 
 each of the several churches that make up the bulk 
 of Christendom if it were devoid of any essential 
 element of divine truth. Yet there is no church 
 among them all but has its failings, none without 
 its alloy of error, not one but that is impeded by a 
 partial view of truth. Where one is strong, another 
 is weak; where one fails, another succeeds. 
 
 It has been often said that denominational differ- 
 ences are temperamental, and that the various 
 Christian bodies appeal to various tj'pes of men, 
 their members being drawn to one another by a 
 “consciousness of kind.” If this be true in any 
 degree, what is it but a confession of the partiality 
 and bias of every such communion, and of the ina- 
 bility of any one of them to appeal to all sorts and 
 conditions of men? But if that be true, does it 
 not prove that no existing church reflects the full- 
 orbed Christ, but only a fraction of his refulgence? 
 Christ is “divided” among them. There is no church 
 that sees more than a single facet of the jewel, not 
 one but that is blind to the full glory of the revela- 
 tion. For Christ himself appeals to every tern- 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 21 
 
 perament and to the entire man, and the richer the 
 man’s personality, the more complete his develop- 
 ment, the more rounded his character, the stronger 
 the appeal. And if the appeal of the Church to the 
 world is to be a universal appeal, attracting every 
 t;y’pe of man and revealing the complete Christ to 
 the entire man, the fractional revelations of partic- 
 ular churches must be united. No one can fully 
 understand Christ except in the fellowship of all 
 kinds of believers. They who approach him from 
 varied angles must bring their contributions to the 
 common store, if the Church’s conception of the 
 Christ is to be rich enough and full enough to win 
 the world. Some see the breadth, and some the 
 length, and others the depth, and still others the 
 height; but if the Christian is ever to “be able to 
 comprehend what is the breadth and length and 
 depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, 
 which passeth knowledge,” and thus “be filled with 
 all the fulness of God,” it must be “with all the 
 saints.” No man or church, in our divided state, 
 is large enough to comprehend this alone, and that 
 is why our views are still prejudiced and partial 
 and devoid of compelling power. If we are to un- 
 derstand the Christ, we must come to him together. 
 Paul desired to visit the brethren in Rome that he 
 might impart unto them “some spiritual gift”; — 
 that is, that he might share with them the product 
 
22 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of an experience of the Christ that they did not 
 possess; — but he desired also to gain from them, for 
 the strengthening and broadening of his own spirit- 
 ual life, that which they had gained from another 
 angle, — “that I with you may be comforted in you, 
 each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and 
 mine.” 
 
 The separate companies of the disciples of the 
 Lord, therefore, have suffered irreparable damage 
 through their long estrangement, in being deprived 
 of that mutual enlargement that springs from spirit- 
 ual fellowship. We are shut off from one another 
 by denominational fences sometimes so high that 
 we cannot see over them. Here are churches that 
 lack the historic sense. They are but of yesterday, 
 and have never experienced the charm or felt the 
 conserving influence of Christian tradition; but 
 they are moving vigorously forward with power 
 under the influence of a mighty passion for the liv- 
 ing Christ. Here, on the other hand, are churches 
 adorned with the gifts of the centuries. They are 
 like vases set in some cathedral at Easter time into 
 which the worshipers, as they pass, drop rich gar- 
 ments and jewels. But they are burdened by the 
 very wealth of their heritage, and the dignity of their 
 ritual hampers the spirit. They lack freedom and 
 spontaneity. Here are churches strong in doctrine: 
 out of them have come the great theologians and 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 23 
 
 teachers of Christendom. Here are others with a 
 more popular and democratic appeal, who know 
 better how to gain and keep the ear of the common 
 people. Cannot the denominations learn from one 
 another and share their gifts? The weakness of 
 the witness of the Church lies in its disunion. Only 
 a united Church can understand or reveal the Lord 
 of the Church. It takes all the seven colors of the 
 spectrum to make the sunlight: the sun cannot 
 express itself through a single color. Nor can the 
 Christ express himself through a broken fragment 
 of his body, the Church: therefore he prayed, 
 “That they may all be one, as thou. Father, art 
 in me, and I in thee; that the world may believe 
 that thou didst send me.” 
 
 In a little book entitled In Praise of Legend, 
 there is told the story of “ a people living in a world 
 which is divided into three countries, Cerulia, 
 Rubia, and Flavia. Parsee-like, they worship 
 the Sun. None could see the Sun itself, but each 
 worshiped through the peculiar color seen as 
 through a prism by each — blue, red, or yellow. 
 Each believed his own color to be the only color of 
 the Deity: 
 
 ‘Cerulians see all things blue; 
 
 Through red the Rubians all view; 
 
 While Flavians indeed declare 
 There’s naught but yellow in the air.’ 
 
24 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Each country holds that none can approach the 
 Sun — 
 
 'Except along the path of light 
 Which each declares alone is right.’ 
 
 And so each despises the other. ... So they live 
 their lives, each tenacious of his ovui creed, and all 
 full of contempt for those who differ from them. 
 At length one day a sage appears among them and 
 tries to put them right. He tells them: 
 
 ‘The Light 
 
 Which after death wiU meet their sight, 
 
 Will not be yellow, blue, or red. 
 
 But white and glorious instead, 
 
 A pure and everlasting blaze 
 Of beautiful, love-blended rays.’ 
 
 The lesson is,” the author continues, “that Truth is 
 only seen through prisms by the unit. Not until 
 each sees the truth as seen by the whole will each 
 grasp the fact that his own color is only one hue in it, 
 and must blend with the other colors before it can 
 be called the Truth. Each has his own quota to 
 contribute and each will see more as he tries to see 
 through the eyes of all. It is only the whole 
 Church that can see the whole Truth.” 
 
 Upon the administrative side of its activity also the 
 Church has suffered a disastrous loss of efficiency 
 through its divisions. This is evident in many 
 quarters in the prevalence, to use an odious but 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 25 
 
 seemingly indispensable term, of “over-churching.” 
 There will be differences of opinion as to the degree 
 of its prevalence, and as to the point at which it 
 makes its appearance, but no disagreement as to its 
 existence. 
 
 From a study of the statistics of 1910, as given by 
 Dr. Carroll, of the following larger divisions of 
 Protestants within the United States, Baptists 
 (Regular, North and South, and Free), Congre- 
 gationalists. Disciples, Methodists (North and 
 South), Presbyterians (North and South), and 
 Protestant Episcopalians, it appears that in these 
 bodies are 13,385,600 communicants, with 76,783 
 ministers and 116,012 edifices. From the statis- 
 tics of the Roman Catholic Church of the same date 
 it appears that for 12,425,947 communicants there 
 are 17,084 priests and 13,461 churches. Thus 
 for the Protestant denominations mentioned there 
 was a church building to every 115 communicants, 
 and a minister to every 173 communicants, while 
 for the Roman Catholic Church there was a church 
 building for every 923 communicants, and one priest, 
 on the average, for 727 communicants. If we 
 deduct 20 per cent, from the number of Protestant 
 ministers, and 10 per cent, from the number of 
 Roman Catholic priests, which have been suggested 
 on plausible grounds as the proper percentages^ 
 
 * Rev. F. Marion Simme, What Must the Church Do to he Saved? p. 77 ff. 
 
26 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 to include those who are superannuated, engaged 
 in secretarial work, or as foreign missionaries, it 
 would provide a Protestant minister to every 218 
 communicants, and a Roman Catholic priest to 
 every 809 communicants. On the basis of the 
 figures for all denominations for 1906, which is the 
 latest date for which complete statistics are avail- 
 able, the Rev. F. Marion Simms asserts that we 
 had, at that date, “one active Protestant pastor in 
 the United States for every 173 Protestant church 
 members, which is one for every 597 non-Catholic 
 population;” while, “on the average, each priest 
 in the United States in 1906 cared for 1,040 souls.”^ 
 The Rev. E. Tallmadge Root, on the basis of the 
 1906 census, declares that “for the United States, 
 Protestants provide 53,282,445 sittings for 20,287,742 
 communicants: so that if the maximum attendance 
 equals the membership, which is not probable, they 
 have two and one-half times as many sittings as 
 are ever used; while the Catholics provide only 
 4,494,377 sittings for 12,079,142 communicants, 
 almost exactly reversing the ratio of sittings and 
 communicants.” After all allowances are made for 
 differences in the modes and conceptions of worship 
 which distinguish Catholics from Protestants, and 
 which permit the former to care for a larger number 
 of worshipers in a single building than is possible to 
 
 ■ Rev. F. Marion Simms, What Must the Church Do to be Saved? 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 27 
 
 the latter, there is still reason to ask, with Mr. Root, 
 whether it would not seem that Protestants are 
 bearing a far larger burden in the maintenance of 
 church equipment than should be necessary. Says 
 the Rev. E. T. Tomlinson, “A careful study of the 
 data presented (for the United States) shows that 
 there are 192,795 church edifices (Protestant) with 
 an average of 157 members per organization, and 
 that the debt of the average body is nearly 50 per 
 cent, of the value of the church property. This 
 implies a heavy tax on the membership even before 
 its legitimate work is begun. With a membership 
 of 157, it is estimated that at least two-thirds of the 
 membership are women. This leaves 52 male mem- 
 bers, of whom doubtless a large proportion are boys 
 too young to be of much financial assistance. If 
 only one-third is deducted for non-resident mem- 
 bers, there are left approximately 20 to 30 men 
 upon whom must fall the chief burden of support 
 of the ‘ average ’ church. What such a tax would be 
 if raised for other than church purposes is ap- 
 parent. An experienced Christian worker has 
 stated it to be his opinion that any community can 
 support a church to every 500 of the population; 
 but the question at issue is not how small a number 
 of people may conceivably maintain a church, but 
 
 * Rev. E. T. Tomlinson, Ph. D., “Too Many Churches,” in The World’s 
 Work, August, 1913. 
 
28 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 how large a population may be efficiently served by 
 a single church and a single minister. 
 
 The penalty of the crowding of churches into one 
 community is commonly the neglect of other and 
 neighboring communities. During the last two or 
 three years the Board of Home Missions of the 
 Presbyterian Church (North), under the direction 
 of its Department of Church and Country Life, 
 has made extensive surveys of various parts of the 
 country, from which interesting information as to 
 the relation of the number of churches to the popula- 
 tion may be gleaned. In Illinois the 44 communi- 
 ties investigated, which included rural districts and 
 towns up to a population of 3,000 and a total popula- 
 tion of 114,975, contained 225 churches, in which 20 
 different denominations were represented, — an 
 average of five churches to the community. Only 
 77 of these churches had grown in ten years. Forty- 
 seven churches, abandoned during that period, were 
 still standing, while many others had been torn 
 down. Only 19 per cent, of the population at- 
 tended church regularly and 50 per cent, of the 
 Protestant membership did not attend. There was 
 one church to every 511 of the population, with an 
 average attendance of 93. Meanwhile, there were 
 30 rural communities without a church within a 
 radius of five miles, leaving 48 per cent, of the popula- 
 tion absolutely untouched by the Church. In Penn- 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 29 
 
 sylvania 53 communities, with a population of 
 124,203, were studied, within which were 348 
 churches, or one to every 357 people. Forty-two 
 per cent, of the population were church members, 
 of whom 69 per cent, attended regularly, the church- 
 goers constituting 29 per cent, of the population. 
 Fifty per cent, of the churches were growing, 26 per 
 cent, standing still, and 24 per cent, declining. 
 Five communities were without a church within a 
 radius of five miles. In Missouri there were found 
 in 23 villages, averaging 240 in population, 56 
 churches, or one to every 100 people. Four vil- 
 lages had four churches each, and two of these 
 villages had less than 225 inhabitants each. The 
 surveys in Ohio and Indiana give results of a similar 
 character. 
 
 Note. — Dr. Tomlinson, in the article quoted above, gives the following 
 statistics for Vermont; 
 
 Number of 
 
 
 Population. 
 
 Churches. 
 
 Bennington 
 
 6,000 ■ 
 
 6 
 
 Brandon 
 
 2,000 
 
 5 
 
 Castleton 
 
 1,000 
 
 4 
 
 Center Rutland 
 
 200 
 
 1 
 
 East Hubbardton 
 
 470 
 
 2 
 
 East Poultney 
 
 300 
 
 2 
 
 Fair Haven 
 
 3,500 
 
 8 
 
 Fowler 
 
 200 
 
 1 
 
 Hydeville 
 
 150 
 
 2 
 
 Ira 
 
 600 
 
 1 
 
 Manchester 
 
 2,200 
 
 5 
 
 Mendon 
 
 200 
 
 2 
 
 Middletown Springs 
 
 150 
 
 1 
 
 North Bennington 
 
 800 
 
 3 
 
 Pittsford 
 
 
 5 
 
30 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Number of 
 Population. Churches. 
 
 Poultney 2,500 5 
 
 Pownal 150 2 
 
 Proctor 1,200 3 
 
 Rutland 13,500 14 
 
 Shaftesbury 500 3 
 
 Wallingford 700 3 
 
 West Haven 300 2 
 
 West Pawlet 500 3 
 
 West Rutland 4,500 11 
 
 This is an average of a church to about 447 people. One county in 
 the state of Massachusetts contains a church for every 295 inhabitants. 
 In Webster County, Kentucky, are 68 Protestant churches, one to every 
 308 of the population, with an average membership of less than 90. 
 
 Conditions such as these, examples of which 
 might be furnished almost indefinitely from every 
 section of the country, effectually dispose of the 
 question whether over-churching exists. If further 
 illustrations are desired, they may be obtained in the 
 results of the intensive studies of Tompkins county, 
 New York, and Windsor county, Vermont, by C. O. 
 Gill and Gifford Pinchot, published in a volume 
 entitled The Country Church. These studies tell 
 the same story of the reduplication of churches, with 
 the heavy burden of expense and loss of efficiency 
 and the decreasing membership and attendance 
 that go with it. Nor are these conditions confined 
 to village and country communities. The cities 
 suffer from them also, as many authorities agree. 
 
 The present generation is not so largely to blame 
 for the disabilities under which it labors as are 
 generations past, that, in a day when denomina- 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 31 
 
 tional feeling ran higher than now, felt driven to 
 further their sectarian propaganda by the founding 
 of churches wherever they could secure a foothold. 
 But in very many communities the sour grapes of the 
 fathers have set the children’s teeth on edge. The 
 children wrestle with problems which they should 
 never have been called upon to face. In addition 
 to the natural and inevitable diflficulties of Christian 
 work, especially in small communities, they must 
 struggle with artificial hindrances set for them by 
 the unwise zeal of their predecessors. 
 
 The consequence of the unbearable expense of 
 maintenance, where churches are multiplied beyond 
 the ability of communities adequately to sustain 
 them, falls most heavily upon the ministry in the 
 inadequacy of salaries. It is unfair to the many 
 noble men who labor in such communities, in many 
 instances with a rare degree of self-sacrifice, to re- 
 quire them to expend their energies under the dis- 
 couragement that comes from the suspicion or cer- 
 tainty that, because of the multiplication of churches, 
 their efforts are not needed. But when such men, 
 many of them with a training that has cost much in 
 money and in time, are asked to toil for the wage 
 of unskilled labor, it becomes a crime against the 
 spirit of religion. 
 
 The average salary of ministers of all denomina- 
 tions in the United States was stated by the census 
 
32 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 report of 1906, the latest figures available, to be 
 $663, or an average of $12.75 per week; and the aver- 
 age for all denominations in communities outside 
 the principal cities was reported to be $573, or $11.02 
 per week. Though the minister must be thoroughly 
 and expensively trained, and is put to great expense 
 to maintain his efficiency, his average wage is thus 
 seen to be far below the level of the average paid to 
 the mechanic. Taking for comparison the figures 
 for the same year presented by the Bureau of Labor 
 we find the following to have been the average wages 
 paid at that date in the occupations named: brick- 
 layers, $29.05 per week; carpenters, $15.46; plas- 
 terers, $27.82; glass-blowers (window glass), $38.29; 
 compositors, $18.87; and cigar-makers, $17.42.^ 
 
 1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 71, 1907. 
 
 The following are the figures from the census of 1906 that indicate 
 the actual average salaries paid by the principal Protestant denomina- 
 tions in the United States in communities of less than 25,000 population: 
 
 Southern Baptist Convention S334 
 
 Disciples or Christians 526 
 
 United Brethren 547 
 
 Methodist Episcopal (South) 681 
 
 Northern Baptist Convention 683 
 
 Methodist Episcopal (North) 741 
 
 Lutheran 744 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (South) 857 
 
 Congrega tional 880 
 
 Reformed Church in America 923 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. (North) 977 
 
 Universalists 987 
 
 Protestant Episcopal 994 
 
 These figures should be interpreted in terms of the cost of living, which 
 varies in different sections of the country. 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 33 
 
 It seems probable, further, that the salaries of 
 ministers, especially in rural communities, are grow- 
 ing smaller rather than larger. In the study of 
 Windsor and Tompkins counties, already referred 
 to, the authors say, “The churches of both counties 
 are giving less and less pay to their ministers. 
 Reckoned in dollars, there was an increase of 16 per 
 cent, in Windsor county, while in Tompkins county 
 the increase was less than one per cent. Reckoned 
 in purchasing power, less real pay was given in each 
 county during the second period than in the first 
 (r. e., twenty years earlier). The amount of real 
 pay declined seven per cent, in Windsor county and 
 nearly 16 per cent, in Tompkins county. 
 
 Such salaries where they are insuflBcient to sustain 
 their recipients at even a low degree of efficiency 
 must be eked out with aid from state and national 
 missionary boards, a large fraction of whose funds 
 must go to the support of churches engaged in com- 
 petitive and often superfluous activity. Mean- 
 while great districts within the United States are 
 without a church or religious privileges of any kind, 
 and while the religious interests of many communi- 
 ties in the home land are actually depressed by a 
 surplus of churches and ministers, the forces at 
 work upon the foreign field cry for reinforcements. 
 
 These evils of over-churching, and consequent 
 
 3 
 
 ' Loco, cit.t p. 14. 
 
34 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 loss of spiritual fellowship between the various 
 bodies of Christians who are forced into competition 
 with one another, together with this waste of equip- 
 ment and unnecessary expense of church mainte- 
 nance, and handicapping of ministers through the 
 payment of inadequate salaries, are a part of the 
 price that Protestantism is paying for the luxury of 
 its divisions. But these do not constitute the entire 
 cost. There results from the disunion of Protest- 
 antism an incalculable loss in national and local 
 prestige and leadership. 
 
 The usefulness of the Church in the local com- 
 munity is sadly impaired by this division of its forces. 
 There is no argument for Christianity like the unity 
 of Christians. When the voices of all the churches 
 blend in a single message there is weight and power 
 behind it. Competition between churches that 
 claim to be servants of the same Master seems to the 
 world so incongruous with the spirit of that Master 
 as to impair the credentials of the institution that 
 professes to represent him. 
 
 In its divided state the Church is unable to render 
 to the nation the service which is rightfully expected 
 of it. The State has relieved the Church of the 
 burdens of taxation and accorded to it a place of 
 special privilege with the expectation of certain 
 services in return. The Church ought to be the in- 
 carnate conscience of the State. In the midst of 
 
EXPENSE AND WASTE OF CHRISTIAN DISUNION 35 
 
 the starving, hurried, restless populace, bent upon 
 gain and power, it stands with spire pointing to the 
 skies, a perpetual witness to truths whose values are 
 eternal. It is the task of the Church to spiritualize 
 the ideals of democracy; but from its often dis- 
 cordant and always divided witness what unity of 
 impression upon the national life is possible? In 
 the danger of a loss of influence that shall be com- 
 plete and final the perils of disunion reach their cul- 
 mination. All systematic religious education has 
 been crowded out of the public schools, to their im- 
 measurable loss and peril, largely because the 
 churches cannot agree upon what teaching shall be 
 furnished. The Church is losing its authority over 
 family life. An increasing proportion of marriage 
 ceremonies are performed by officers of the State 
 without the sanction of religion, and the percentage 
 of divorces advances rapidly. Large areas of thought 
 have been permitted to pass beyond the controlling 
 inffuence of the Church, and an increasing percentage 
 of religious feeling and activity is to be found out- 
 side of, and out of relation to it. Thus irreligion 
 feeds upon the follies of the representatives of 
 religion. The organized efforts for human better- 
 ment, whose passion has stirred our legislatures and 
 courts of justice and commercial institutions, this 
 new “enthusiasm of humanity” that has come upon 
 the world in our day, is not led by the Church. Too 
 
36 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 often the Church is found near the rear of the 
 procession, swept into it by the suction of the 
 mighty movement as the army of progress marches 
 by. Why does not the Church lead? Because it 
 is paralyzed by its divisions, like a body in which a 
 nerve is. cut, so that the members have lost their 
 connection with each other and with the organizing 
 brain, and cannot move together. There is danger 
 that the Church will lose not only the place of 
 leadership, but the capacity for it as well, unless it 
 shall learn again, like the church at Philippi, how to 
 “stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving 
 together for the faith of the gospel.” 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY AND 
 WHAT BECAME OF IT 
 
The unity taught by Christ — a unity of spirit; a moral 
 unity; a vital unity. — ^Unity of the apostolic churches. — 
 Teaching of Paul upon the subject.— Unity by coercion in the 
 Roman Church. — Effect of the Reformation. — Present condi- 
 tions and agencies in America conducive to Christian unity. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 AND WHAT BECAME OF IT 
 
 It is among the most hopeful signs of our times 
 that Christians within every communion are com- 
 ing to realize how serious and wicked a thing it is 
 that the moral force of the churches should be di- 
 verted to the little issues that divide them, when it 
 is so greatly needed for the advancement of the 
 kingdom of God. The sin of its divisions, the folly 
 and peril of its wasteful rivalries, lie heavy upon 
 the mind and conscience of the Church. Now, as 
 the smoke of ancient controversies is clearing away, 
 Christians of every name are turning to each other 
 with a wistful desire for a closer fellowship; and, 
 hedged about though they are by the theologies, 
 institutions, and ceremonials witli which each com- 
 munion has surrounded itself during its years of 
 isolation, hand seeks hand across the barriers, and 
 heart is touching heart. Among all the differences 
 that have kept them apart, Christ’s followers have 
 never quite forgotten his prayer that they might 
 be one, and by the memory of it they have been 
 rebuked even while they disputed. Now the de- 
 
 39 
 
40 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 sire of Jesus is finding a new response in the hearts 
 of his disciples, and earnestly they are seeking the 
 means by which the ideal of their Master may be 
 realized. Christendom is turning to its divine 
 Leader to learn of him the things that make for the 
 peace of the Church; and, the world around, the 
 disciples of Jesus, with a seriousness and a degree 
 of unanimity that herald a new day, are giving 
 themselves to a fresh study of the mind of their 
 Lord. 
 
 Jesus dealt in principles, not programs; in ideals, 
 not institutions. We shall be disappointed if we 
 approach the teachings of Jesus with the hope of 
 finding there a specific plan for the attainment of 
 the unity of the Church. It is impossible to quote 
 him in support of any one of the forms in which the 
 spirit of Christian unity is expressing itself in our 
 day. He has nothing to say of comity or co-opera- 
 tion, of federation or organic unity. Jesus pro- 
 pounded no programs for the solution of the prob- 
 lems of even his own generation. But while he 
 exhibited an indifference to the form of things, 
 which sometimes is sorely puzzling to the practical 
 Western mind with its faith in organization and legis- 
 lation, he was profoundly concerned with the con- 
 tent and the spirit. When Jesus prayed for his 
 disciples that they might be one, he was thinking, 
 not of organic Church union, nor of any formal 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 41 
 
 unity expressed in organization, but of a vital unity 
 springing from the possession of a common spirit 
 and a common purpose. He was not thinking of 
 the Church, nor of sacraments, nor of ecclesiastical 
 polities, nor of creeds. Jesus never taught a system 
 of theology, nor ordained a priesthood, or even an 
 official ministry, nor organized a church. Thejiur- ^ 
 pose of Jesus was to propagate a spirit, not to estab- • 
 lish an institution. He seems to have been willing 
 that the form should shape itself so long as the con- 
 tent and purpose were good. He spoke of “one 
 flock,” not of “one fold,”^ with the ecclesiastical 
 associations that such a term suggests — “they shall 
 become one flock, one shepherd.” He prayed that 
 they who believed on him might be one, leaving it 
 to the spirit of love, without which no mode of 
 unity is possible, to determine what form would 
 manifest it best. 
 
 That it was a unity of spirit and not of organiza- 
 tion of which Jesus was thinking is evident in the 
 terms in which he speaks of it. He desired such a 
 oneness among the disciples as he himself enjoyed 
 with God the Father — “that they may all be one; 
 even as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee,” 
 The profound simplicity of his habit of thought for- 
 bids us to suppose that Jesus was speaking here in 
 terms of the Trinity, or of substance and essence, or 
 
 John 10 ; 16, R. V. 
 
42 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of any of the categories by which men have obscured 
 that simplicity, and in which they have stereotyped 
 their thinking about the divine nature. Such ab- 
 stractions were foreign to him always : they belong to 
 a later, a philosophizing age. He speaks of his unity 
 with the Father as of a sort which disciple may have 
 with disciple, and which must be capable of expres- 
 sion, therefore, in terms of human experience. 
 “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and 
 to accomplish his work;” “The words that I say 
 unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father 
 abiding in me doeth his works;” “My Father 
 worketh even until now, and I work” : — in such ex- 
 pressions lies the secret of his meaning. Evidently 
 he was thinking of that moral and spiritual fellowship 
 in which he was united with the Father, of a com- 
 munity of thought and purpose, and of partnership 
 in service. There is no division of interest, no con- 
 flict of will, no contradiction in word, no antagonism 
 in action between himself and the Father; and it was 
 such unity that Jesus desired the disciples should 
 enjoy with one another. 
 
 It was, further, a moral unity, cemented by the 
 possession in common of a single moral ideal. Jesus 
 first prayed that his disciples might be kept from 
 the soiling influences of the world and dedicated to 
 the truth, and then that they might dwell together 
 in loving fellowship. Sin drives men apart and 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTLVN UNITY 43 
 
 keeps them apart. It is always divisive. The 
 greatest obstacle to Christian unity is selfishness. 
 In proportion as the disciples of Jesus are free from 
 worldliness and devoted to the truth will they be 
 drawn together: the more truly Christlike they 
 are, in other words, the more closely united they 
 will be. 
 
 Above all, it was a vital unity which Jesus desired 
 for his disciples, the bond of which should be the 
 possession of a common spiritual experience. He 
 yearned that the disciples should share in the divine 
 life by which he, himself, was consciously energized, 
 and thus be united with God and with each other. 
 Through his presence in the lives of the disciples 
 such a union was to be perfected; his was the life 
 of the vine which, flowing into the branches, was to 
 relate them to one another as parts of a single 
 organism. 
 
 It was such unity as this, spiritual, moral, vital, 
 that Jesus desired for his disciples in every age. 
 He was praying not merely for the little group of 
 the Twelve, but “for them also that believe on me 
 through their word;” and the bond upon which 
 Jesus depended to unite the company of his im- 
 mediate disciples is the only bond that is strong 
 enough to hold together the Church in any age. 
 They who are not first united to Christ in loyalty 
 and love, and to one another by the consciousness 
 
44 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 that they share a common spiritual life, will never 
 be held together long by the artificial bonds of 
 organization, or creed, or ecclesiastical authority. 
 No other grounds of unity are possible in the twen- 
 tieth century than those upon which was built the 
 unity of the first. 
 
 Such a spirit manifest in the disciples Jesus be- 
 lieved to be essential to the fulfilment of their mis- 
 sion. To him it was not conceivable that the dis- 
 ciples could ever win the world unless they were 
 united. A divided Church is a defeated Church. 
 If the world is to be convinced of the divine mission 
 and authority of the Messiah, as it so sadly needs 
 to be convinced, his disciples must speak together, 
 with one voice; and if the world is to be persuaded 
 that God loves the Church of Christ and that it is 
 entitled to represent him, then members of the 
 Church must love one another. Truth proclaimed 
 through faction can have no power over the w'orld. 
 The strongest argument for the genuineness of 
 Christianity is lives controlled by it; and factious 
 and contentious spirits belie the presence of Christ. 
 The most convincing Christian apologetic is a Chris- 
 tian community united in love. If love for Christ 
 is so weak in the Church that it cannot hold together 
 those that profess it, how can it hope to win a hostile 
 or indifferent world? 
 
 Such was the principle and ideal of unity with 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 45 
 
 which the company of disciples of Jesus started upon 
 their world-wide career. It was natural and in- 
 evitable, in the circumstances in which they found 
 themselves, that the little group of believers and 
 those whom they attracted to their number, in their 
 attempt to realize this ideal, and fulfil the prayer of 
 their Lord, should effect some form of organization. 
 The soul must clothe itself with a body if it is to be 
 visible; the spirit of unity that prevailed among 
 the disciples must disclose itself if it is to bear its 
 message to the world. Thus, wherever the apostles 
 journeyed upon their preaching tours they formed 
 their converts into local brotherhoods or churches. 
 Paul tells us that he established churches in every 
 city. These churches, moreover, wherever located, 
 were bound to one another within the fold of a more 
 inclusive brotherhood. Throughout the apostolic 
 age, while there were churches at Antioch, at Cor- 
 inth, at Laodicea, and elsewhere, they were united 
 in more than a mere confederation. From the 
 beginning all Christians thought of themselves, 
 not simply as members of a local congregation at 
 Philippi or Ephesus, but as members of the universal 
 Christian Church of which the church in a particular 
 city was only a local manifestation. The earliest 
 Christians thought of their community as a family, 
 and conversion marked their adoption into the 
 household of faith. Wherever the Church spread. 
 
46 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 this conception of its character continued, and Chris- 
 tians everywhere were brethren, and members of 
 the same family in Christd 
 The desire of the Apostle Paul to promote this 
 sentiment is evident throughout all his epistles. 
 In founding churches among the Gentiles he was 
 not, as he conceived it, establishing independent 
 organizations, but was adding to the Christian 
 family. The Gentiles were to be grafted in among 
 the Jewish Christians and to become “ partaker with 
 them of the root of the fatness of the olive tree.”^ 
 It was Paul’s desire, not merely to promote the unity 
 of the Church, but to secure the co-operation of all 
 the churches that he founded with the Jerusalem 
 church in particular, and it was because that union 
 was endangered that he was caused such anxiety 
 at the time of the Council at Jerusalem. It Is true 
 that the unity of spirit between the Gentile churches 
 and the church at Jerusalem was never ideal; but 
 the earnest desire of the apostle that it should be 
 cemented is evident in his emphasis upon the great 
 collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, which he 
 urged so strongly upon the churches that he had 
 founded, in the hope that this evidence of good-will 
 might bind the parent church to them in closer 
 fellowship. 
 
 * Cf. McGiffert, Tks Apostolic Age, p. 636 ff. 
 2 Rom. 11 : 17 ff. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 47 
 
 It is of the Church universal that Paul is think- 
 ing when he speaks of it as “the body of Christ,”^ 
 and uses the figure as an argument particularly 
 against the sin of schism. “For as the body is 
 one, and hath many members, and all the members 
 of the body, being many, are one body; so also,” he 
 declares, “is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all 
 baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, 
 whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of 
 one Spirit.” While he finds abundant scope for 
 variety and diversity within the unity of the Church, 
 as there are differences of function and honor among 
 the members of the body, he urges the utmost con- 
 sideration and mutual forbearance among the con- 
 stituent members in order “that there should be no 
 schism in the body.” He strongly deprecates the 
 forming of sects under the leadership and name of 
 human teachers as doing violence to the unity of the 
 body of Christ, for that Christ should be divided 
 is to him both an abhorrent and an impossible idea.^ 
 He continually urges his converts that they endeavor 
 to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
 peace.” “There is one body,” he declares, “and 
 one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope 
 of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
 one God and Father of all, who is over all, and 
 through all, and in all.” The various gifts dis- 
 
 1 1. Cor. 12 : 12-27. a I. Cor. 1 : 13 ff. 
 
48 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 tributed by the ascended Christ to believers have 
 for the goal of their exercise “the perfecting of the 
 saints unto the work of ministering, unto the build- 
 ing up of the body of Christ : till we all attain unto 
 the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
 Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure 
 of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”^ 
 
 During the apostolic period the unity of the 
 Church, it is evident, was one of spirit and not of 
 organization. Differences of church polity appear 
 even within New Testament times. The organiza- 
 tion of the earliest churches was the simplest pos- 
 sible, and was often affected by local condition and 
 custom. The scattered Christian communities were 
 held together, not by any scheme of organization or 
 governmental authority exercised from without, nor 
 by subscription to a single creedal statement; but 
 by possession, in common, of the ideal of a united 
 Church. As members of the one body of Christ 
 they were bound to love their brethren. There 
 was no central government, no ecclesiastical hier- 
 archy, no compulsion but the compulsion of love. 
 That the separate churches did not diverge and 
 become altogether independent of one another in 
 their developing life was due to the possession of a 
 single ideal and spirit. Their sense of unity was 
 fostered by the visits of apostles and prophets from 
 
 > Eph. 4 : 3-6; 12, 13. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 49 
 
 the parent church, by an interchange of visits on the 
 part of local leaders, by the circulation of Christian 
 literature among the churches, particularly the 
 letters of the apostles, and most of all by the per- 
 secution which they endured together at the hands 
 of Jew and Gentile. • While these cemented the 
 union, they did not create it. It was a purely ideal 
 unity, dependent upon the belief of Christians every- 
 where that their Lord meant them to be one, and 
 that love for Him involved it. Says Prof. Glover, 
 in his Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Em- 
 pire, “Two things stand out, when we study the 
 character of early Christianity — its great complexity 
 and variety, and its unity in the personality of Jesus 
 of Nazareth.” 
 
 Several generations passed before the process 
 began that was to transform this spiritual unity of 
 the first disciples into a “catholicity,” which de- 
 pended for its expression upon a form of church 
 polity. Gradually the independence of the local 
 church was surrendered to a diocesan bishop as the 
 visible representative of the universal Church ; 
 however, with this outward appearance of unity 
 there was no corresponding growth in the spirit 
 of it. The spirit of unity that sprang from a wealth 
 of love and the sense of a common mission and 
 allegiance slowly lost ground before the advance of 
 a visible and formal unity manifested in a hierarchy 
 
 4 
 
50 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of church officials and in authoritative creeds and 
 councils. Toward the close of the apostolic age 
 unity was more and more secured by the simple 
 method of excluding all who differed with the ruling 
 majority, until the Church was united, indeed, but 
 had ceased to be comprehensive. 
 
 Most of the dissenting groups of the first three 
 centuries were actuated by a desire to return to the 
 simplicity of the faith and order of the apostles, 
 but their failure to secure the favor of the dominant 
 majority branded them as heretics, and pronounced 
 their doom. “Many schisms arose in the early 
 ages,” wrote Dr. Philip Schaff, “before and after 
 the Council of Nicea. Almost every great contro- 
 versy resulted in the excommunication of the de- 
 feated party, who organized a separate sect, if they 
 were not exterminated by the civil power. The 
 Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, and Copts, who 
 seceded from the Greek Orthodox Church, continue 
 to this day as relics of dead controversies.”^ The 
 beginning of the age of Catholicism marked the 
 beginning of sectarianism through the perpetual 
 protest of successive groups of Christians who re- 
 sisted the drift of the leaders of the Church away 
 from the doctrines and practices of the apostolic 
 age. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to review the history 
 
 ^ Schaff, The Reunion of Christendom, p. 5. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 51 
 
 of succeeding ages, or to indicate in more than out- 
 line the steps by which a formal unity was secured 
 through the development of a compact and powerful 
 ecclesiastical organization, and the promulgation of 
 authoritative dogmas. The Church was compelled 
 to pay the price of a growing popularity in the grad- 
 ual materialization of its ideals. Among the thou- 
 sands who flocked into its fold were many who were 
 imperfectly weaned from paganism, and who 
 brought with them their pagan ideals and cere- 
 monies. The pressure of the intellectualism of the 
 Greco-Roman world, in the midst of which it lived, 
 tempted the Church to formulate its creeds in the 
 language of the current philosophies. The struggle 
 of the Church with its most formidable antagonist. 
 Gnosticism, and its attendant errors, appeared to 
 the Church to compel it to define with the utmost 
 exactness the essentials of orthodoxy, and to em- 
 phasize its distinctive ceremonies as necessary to 
 salvation. The free and plastic polity of the New 
 Testament was early abandoned and the Church 
 was modeled upon the Empire. The bishop ceased 
 to be the overseer of a single parish and became the 
 governor of a district, like the Roman proconsul. 
 The college of cardinals corresponded to the senate, 
 and the pope was established on Caesar’s seat to 
 rule a spiritual and temporal empire. The spirit 
 of the gospel was imprisoned within semi-legal 
 
52 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 forms; penance took the place of penitence; ortho- 
 doxy became submission to the councils, and heresy 
 was identified with disobedience to them. Faith 
 lost its experimental, vital character, and became 
 intellectual assent to dogma; while the s im ple 
 ordinances observed by the early Church developed 
 into sacraments endowed with a magical efficacy. 
 Freedom and spontaneity in worship gave way 
 before the exclusive use of liturgies. Where moral 
 suasion failed to secure unity, force was substituted; 
 and individual liberty was sacrificed upon the altar 
 of authority. 
 
 At length, after the long sleep of the Dark Ages, 
 the light of the Renaissance broke through the night, 
 not only awakening the minds of men to a new appre- 
 ciation of their heritage in art and literature, which 
 had been so long neglected, but rousing the slumber- 
 ing consciences of men to claim again that spiritual 
 liberty which was the birthright of the earl}^ Church. 
 The new learning stimulated the spirit of criticism; 
 a new nationalism stirred the spirit of revolt; the 
 gospel, rediscovered, kindled again the embers of 
 the apostolic faith in the hearts of thousands; and 
 the spirit of man entered upon a new career of free- 
 dom. The Reformation shattered in pieces the 
 formal unity of the Church. The right of every 
 man to interpret the Scriptures for himself was 
 asserted in the face of arrogant authority, and men 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTLA.N UNITY 53 
 
 claimed again the privilege of access to the divine 
 Father without the intervention of priest, or saint, 
 or institution. 
 
 This marked the beginning of the modern age. 
 The ferment of the new wine broke the ancient 
 wine-skins, and new bottles were needed to receive 
 it. For four centuries a large part of Christendom 
 has enjoyed a measure of religious freedom, and the 
 spirit of man has created a multitude of institutions 
 through which the religious impulse has found ex- 
 pression. Beyond computation has been the gain 
 of the race from the rediscovery of those formative 
 ideas which were the d;ymamic of the Reformation. 
 Yet even freedom has its dangers, and may easily 
 degenerate into license. Individuality unrestrained 
 tends toward self-assertion and eccentricity. The 
 revolt against an unnatural and compulsory uni- 
 formity has not been attended by the recovery of 
 the secret of that spiritual unity which held to- 
 gether the apostolic Church, for the preservation of 
 which the Master prayed. 
 
 In America, which has long enjoyed the blessings 
 of that religious liberty of which Roger Williams was 
 the first exponent, the tendency toward division 
 and subdivision has gone the farthest, until, in 
 its 143 denominations of Christians, it would seem 
 that every possible difference of doctrine and pro- 
 cedure must be represented. The “dissidence of 
 
54 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 dissent” has reached a rediictio ad absurdum. In 
 the dissipation of resources, the duplication of 
 agencies, the competition in over-churched com- 
 munities and the neglect of needy areas which such 
 division of its forces entails, Protestantism has 
 passed the danger point, and its power to achieve 
 the thing for which it was created has already 
 suffered loss. Energy that ought to have been 
 directed toward the redemption of the world has 
 been spent in wasteful rivalry, and even in recrimina- 
 tion. The seamless robe of Christ is rent, and the 
 Church, his body, is torn into fragments. A babel 
 of discordant voices threatens to drown the voice 
 of prophecy; every vagary claims the right of ut- 
 terance; and under cloak of the right of private 
 judgment the duties of tolerance and charity are in 
 danger of being forgotten. This is the weakness 
 and the scandal of Protestantism. 
 
 As the magnitude of the missionary task at home 
 and abroad is more fully grasped, there has come a 
 despair of success except through the united efforts 
 of a united Church. They who pray, “Thy kingdom 
 come,” are forced also to pray for the servants of the 
 kingdom “that they may all be one.” The world 
 will never be won to Christ by guerrilla warfare, by 
 disorganized bands of partisans; but only by an 
 ordered campaign of disciplined troops that advance 
 together. The native Christians upon the foreign 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 55 
 
 field, the first fruits of the missionary enterprise, 
 and missionaries upon the frontier in the home land, 
 are the foremost advocates of a policy of union and 
 co-operation, of the lack of which they have been the 
 most unfortunate victims. 
 
 The problems of social life that so largely occupy 
 the thought of Christendom to-day are a challenge 
 to the Church to unite for their solution. The ills 
 from which society is suffering are more than eco- 
 nomic, and economic readjustments alone will not 
 suffice to correct them. Believing, as it does, that it 
 holds the secret of a real brotherhood of man whose 
 attainment is fundamental to the solution of every 
 social problem, the Church owes a duty to society; 
 but it never can perform that duty until it shall 
 itself incarnate the spirit of brotherhood and speak 
 with the power and weight of a united testimony. 
 
 Slowly the conviction is being borne in upon the 
 consciousness of Christendom that there is no future 
 for a divided Church. “An unbelieving world,” 
 Dr. John R. Mott has said, “is the price we are pay- 
 ing for a divided Christianity.” The forces of evil 
 on every side are consolidating in an unholy alliance. 
 The children of darkness are wiser far in their gen- 
 eration than the children of light. The Church is 
 urged to a crusade the desperate character of which 
 daily becomes more clear; and, if Tancred and 
 Baldwin are to war with one another and spend the 
 
56 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 strength of the crusading army, the hosts of the 
 Saracens may well expect an easy victory. A 
 thousand voices within and without are calling upon 
 the Church to unite, and to combine its forces. The 
 measure in which the people of God of the twentieth 
 century respond to that appeal is the supreme test 
 of modern Christianity. 
 
 So in the midst of the confusion and noise there 
 may be heard a still, small voice speaking with an 
 insistence that compels attention, that is deeply 
 moving the heart of Christendom to-day. It is 
 the voice of the Lord of the Church praying still, 
 as he once prayed in the upper room for his disciples, 
 “that they may all be one; even as thou. Father, 
 art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: 
 that the world may believe that thou didst send 
 me.” Men are turning hopefully to a study of the 
 sources of the unity of the early Church, that dwelt 
 in a holy fellowship cemented by loyalty and love, 
 and are daring to believe that what has been may be 
 again. If Jesus prayed for the unity of his disciples 
 it must be a practicable ideal; and, if so, it shall be 
 achieved! Somehow, it knows not yet how, the 
 prayer of its Lord must be fulfilled by the Church. 
 What Jesus prayed for, his disciples must work for. 
 Without forfeiting again the benefits of a freedom 
 so dearly bought, the disciples of Jesus must be one. 
 
 Great opportunities await the advent of the new 
 
NEW TESTAINIENT IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 57 
 
 catholicity. A world weary of the burdens of in- 
 creasing armaments, and torn with the horrors of 
 unrighteous war sighs for universal peace. An 
 awakening democracy, rising to seize the reins of 
 power in every land, must be spiritualized if it is to 
 fulfil its lofty destiny. The victims of materialism 
 and greed, ground beneath the iron heel of a social 
 and economic system built in the interest of a favored 
 few, call aloud to the Church for succor. Every- 
 where the heathen world holds out manacled hands 
 of entreaty, beseeching to be freed from the iron 
 bands of superstition. And in the face of the need 
 of a crucified humanity, a disunited Church is help- 
 less. It is the imperative duty of the disciples of 
 Jesus to get together! Reluctance is disloyalty to 
 the Lord who prayed for them, and treachery to the 
 world for which he died! 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN 
 SPIRIT 
 
Unity not to be secured at the sacrifice of principle. — 
 Characteristic differences considered unimportant by various 
 denominations. — Rise of denominations in age of individual- 
 ism. — ^The new social organism — its influence upon the Church. 
 — Examples of petty differences and harsh invectives. — Chang- 
 ing world conditions forecast spiritual changes. — Co-operation 
 in theological education. — Church must meet its problems. — 
 Conditions in America most conducive to co-operation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 
 
 The Christian world is no longer willing to believe 
 that spiritual liberty must be maintained at the 
 price of the waste and loss which are the result of 
 its divisions. Is it not possible, men are asking 
 everywhere, for Protestantism to conserve the prin- 
 ciples that are precious to it, and that constitute its 
 strength, and yet find a way to unite its scattered 
 forces and heal its schisms? May it not even con- 
 tinue to cherish the best for which denominational- 
 ism has stood, and still be freed from the bonds of a 
 narrowly sectarian and partisan spirit? 
 
 It may be readily granted that catholicity might 
 be bought at too great a cost. There is no magic in 
 mere unity that would compensate for the surrender 
 of that liberty of conscience, and that insistence 
 upon the spiritual competency of the individual 
 which have been the glory of the Protestant move- 
 ment. It needs no argument to prove that spiritual 
 vigor and fidelity to conviction are of more value 
 than anything that could be received in exchange 
 for them. The danger, however, that Protestants 
 will take a backward step and betray the cause for 
 
 61 
 
62 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 which their fathers bled and died for the sake of 
 any form of unity is exceedingly remote. If a new 
 unity of the Church could be secured to-morrow by 
 the surrender of principle or such a sacrifice of spirit- 
 ual liberty as was demanded by the so-called Cath- 
 olic ages of the past, it would be broken the day 
 after to-morrow by a new Reformation, for the free 
 spirit of man would assert itself again and the arti- 
 ficial bonds would break like tow at the touch of 
 fire. 
 
 It is charged that much of the current advocacy of 
 the cause of Christian unity is merely the expres- 
 sion of a lack of any definite religious conviction 
 whatsoever. Without a doubt, to one who thinks 
 it does not matter what one believes, all shades of 
 belief look very much alike. The Romans of the 
 Empire were broadly tolerant in religious matters, 
 and exceedingly hospitable to new religions, so that 
 the addition of another god or two to the pantheon 
 provoked little comment; but it was because in 
 Rome faith in the gods was almost dead. It is 
 possible, indeed, to be so broad as to be shallow, 
 and tolerance may be only another name for indiffer- 
 ence. “We put blinders upon horses,” says Dr. 
 Parkhurst, “just so that they may not take broad 
 views of things, but may go forward.” Such con- 
 siderations as these, however, may easily be made an 
 excuse for moral cowardice and spiritual bigotry. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 63 
 
 A most cordial recognition of the right of other men 
 to their convictions is surely compatible with the 
 most loyal allegiance to one’s own. It would be 
 humiliating to be compelled to confess that men must 
 be purblind or cease to advance. “A faith depen- 
 dent upon blinkers and fetters, ” Sir Oliver Lodge has 
 said, “ is not likely, in a progressive age, to last many 
 generations. Anchorage to a submerged rock is not 
 safe amid rising waters.” 
 
 Any process of spiritual enlargement is attended 
 with peril. The moment of greatest danger for the 
 “chambered nautilus,” of which Holmes has sung, 
 was doubtless that at which, its outgrown shell dis- 
 carded and its new and larger dwelling not yet con- 
 structed, it lay exposed to every passing foe. At 
 such a point the cause of Christian unity stands 
 to-day. Nevertheless, whatever danger there may 
 be that the larger sympathy, which longs for co- 
 operation and unity with Christians of every name, 
 may lapse into an invertebrate and molluscoid sort 
 of good feeling that lacks force sufficient to accom- 
 plish anything, or even to protect itself from de- 
 struction, there is still greater danger that a nar- 
 rowly denominational loyalty may degenerate into 
 mere pride, obstinacy, and prejudice. There is 
 many a man who sincerely loves the denomination to 
 which he belongs, — because he was reared within it, 
 or found Christ through its ministry, or has labored 
 
64 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 within its ranks until its interests have become 
 identified with his own, or because he believes that 
 of all denominations it is most faithful to New 
 Testament teaching, — but who finds it impossible 
 to ignore the fact that a multitude of other men, as 
 sincere and as Christian as he, make identical 
 claims for their own denominations and profess as 
 great a loyalty to them. Each one among the larger 
 Protestant denominations stoutly claims to stand 
 upon the New Testament platform, and justly 
 prides itself upon a record of useful service. And 
 here is a curious circumstance that must impress 
 itself upon the mind of every thoughtful man, that 
 while the distinctive principles of each denomina- 
 tion seem to its adherents to be so important and so 
 significant for all the world, and not to be sacrificed, 
 they appear, in the degree in which they are dis- 
 tinctive, to be of very little consequence to other 
 denominations, whose members nevertheless exhibit 
 all the essential marks of Christian character and 
 usefulness. Meanwhile the cause of the kingdom 
 suffers irreparable loss from the division of its 
 forces. Reflection upon such considerations as 
 these is breaking down the barriers of prejudice 
 that once separated denominationalists from each 
 other. 
 
 While, therefore, the current advocacy of Chris- 
 tian unity may be due occasionally to spiritual 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 65 
 
 impoverishment or to latitudinarianism, indifference 
 toward the issue, or the failure boldly to advocate 
 it, is more often due to timidity, or to ignorance, 
 or to inertia and a blind conservatism, or to fear 
 of the denominational sheriffs and the editors and 
 officials who are constantly occupied in keeping 
 the denominational fences in repair. 
 
 There is a zeal that believes the peculiarity of a 
 denomination to be the best thing about it, and that 
 confuses religion with the ability to pronounce de- 
 nominational shibboleths, and that rejoices in prin- 
 ciples in proportion as they are distinctive, just as 
 there is a patriotism that cries, “ My country, right 
 or wrong!” To those who accept this position, the 
 virtue of religion lies in “the dissidence of dissent.” 
 Growing up, however, by the side of what President 
 Butler has called “the international mind” is an 
 interdenominational consciousness which must be 
 reckoned with to-day, which, while loyal to dis- 
 tinctive tenets, sees over and beyond them, and 
 recognizes the more imperative claims of a higher 
 loyalty to the interests of the kingdom of God. 
 
 Denominational divisions took their rise during 
 the period marked by the discovery of the indi- 
 vidual. It is among the glories of the Reformation 
 that it asserted the freedom and competency of man 
 as man in the domain of religion, and thus promul- 
 gated a principle which, spreading into other fields, 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 has wrought mightily for his emancipation from 
 every form of thraldom. It was a splendid and 
 epoch-making discovery, that of the rights and dig- 
 nity of man, and it has transformed not only the 
 religious world, but the worlds of industry and of 
 politics, shaping legislation and government and 
 social custom and economic institutions and making 
 always for liberty. But we are passing to-day out 
 of the era of individualism into that of collectivism. 
 We would not part with an atom of what we have 
 gained, nor ever again lose sight of the individual, 
 nor permit the exploitation of his rights; but we 
 are now making a new discovery, — that of the com- 
 munity. Over against the rights of a fraction of 
 society is the right of society as a whole. The free 
 competition of individuals must be restrained and 
 regulated in the interest of the welfare of the com- 
 munity. This is the new emphasis which is exercis- 
 ing the profoundest influence in every realm of 
 thought and conduct. But, while the spirit of in- 
 dividualism was a product of the religious instinct 
 and flrst expressed itself in the religious realm, the 
 collective ideal arose in the social and economic realm 
 and is only slowly making its way in the sphere of 
 religion. Some day the idea of “private religion,” 
 with the unrestrained rights of competition which 
 it involves, will go the way of that conception of 
 “private business” which, with all the arrogant 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 67 
 
 disregard of community interests that it represents, 
 is retreating before the advance of the spirit of 
 democracy. 
 
 This change of emphasis from the individual to 
 the social organism which characterizes our times 
 has relegated to comparative insignificance many of 
 the issues that once divided the ranks of Christen- 
 dom. Interest has shifted from creeds to conduct, 
 and from a purely personal salvation to one that 
 shall save the individual indeed, but that aims also 
 at the saving of society. Men are weary of treat- 
 ing symptoms only, and in every avenue of activ- 
 ity are seeking to discover causes and to deal with 
 them directly. The methods of social science are 
 preventive rather than merely curative, and men 
 now endeavor to purify the stream at its source 
 rather than to filter it at the outlet. Instead of 
 merely relieving poverty, they seek to discover and 
 to remove the causes of poverty. The old method 
 in medicine was to wait until the patient had con- 
 tracted a disease and then to exhaust the resources 
 of science in the effort to cure him. The modern 
 method is to attack disease at its source through 
 sanitation and hygiene. This is increasingly be- 
 coming the method of religion. The Church is 
 more interested than it once was in the conditions 
 that tempt to sin, and is giving attention to the 
 means of prevention as well as to those of cure. As 
 
68 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 has often been said, it is well to play the Good 
 Samaritan and to bind up the wounds of the traveler 
 beset by thieves, but it is necessary also to illumine 
 the highway from Jericho to Jerusalem, and thor- 
 oughly to police it, so that the traveler may pursue 
 his journey in safety. 
 
 From this shifting of emphasis, then, there has 
 come a new appraisal of many of the points of 
 difference that have divided the forces of Christen- 
 dom. Few of the distinctive denominational tenets 
 concern matters over which men with red blood in 
 their veins can become enthusiastic to-day. Seldom 
 do they coincide with a burning conviction of living 
 men. They lie on the periphery and not at the 
 center of religious interest; or they are relics of 
 outgrown controversies. The Church, driven for- 
 ward by the impact of the new spirit of the times, 
 has left most of them behind. How remote at the 
 present time seem some of the differences that 
 once divided Christian people-minute points of 
 doctrine, it may be, or of ritual observance! In one 
 of the smaller cities of the Atlantic coast stand two 
 Presbyterian churches, facing each other, upon 
 opposite sides of the street. They are the result of 
 a division that occurred in one of them almost two 
 generations ago because a portion of the congrega- 
 tion held to a “mediate atonement” and the other 
 to an “immediate atonement,” distinctions which 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 69 
 
 few Christians to-day would understand without 
 recourse to a theological dictionary. At the be- 
 ginning of the eighteenth century the Baptists of 
 Delaware withdrew from fellowship with the Bap- 
 tists of Philadelphia because the latter did not 
 “hold to the laying on of hands.” Doubtless many 
 of the present differences will some day seem as 
 remote. Questions of the validity of orders, of 
 postures and rubrics, of stoles and altar cloths, and 
 of ecclesiastical millinery in general, of forms of 
 polity and of modes of ordinances, once the center 
 of bitter controversy, are of little consequence to- 
 day. Men are weary, also, of spending precious 
 time in “manicuring one another’s theology,” as 
 Dr. Shailer Mathews has phrased it. The questions 
 in which the present generation is interested are such 
 as housing, temperance, the purification of politics, 
 the extension of democracy, the protection of youth, 
 the abolition of poverty, the suppression of com- 
 mercialized vice, and the building up of a real King- 
 dom of God upon earth through the transforma- 
 tion of men into the likeness of Christ, no one of 
 which undertakings is distinctive of any single de- 
 nomination. These are the great enthusiasms; and 
 they are not divisive, but are common to men of 
 every Christian faith. 
 
 Sectarianism in its extreme form is dying to-day 
 for lack of nourishment, as a limb would die if a 
 
70 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 tourniquet were drawn tightly about it, shutting off 
 the blood supply. Where are the doughty cham- 
 pions who once were ready at a moment's notice to 
 descend into the arena and break a lance in the 
 cause of some denominational peculiarity? They 
 are gone, — gone with the ancient bitterness which 
 tainted the atmosphere which they breathed. The 
 leading evangelical preachers of the latter part 
 of the eighteenth century and the first half of the 
 nineteenth were “fighting parsons,” with a freedom 
 in their choice of verbal weapons that appals us 
 to-day. 
 
 “Sidney, in his biography of Rowland Hill, 
 quotes these among the epithets applied to the 
 ‘Calvinists’ by ‘these two meek and loving gentle- 
 men, Messrs. John and Charles Wesley’: ‘devil’s 
 factors, Satan’s synagogues, children of the old, 
 roaring, hellish murderer who believe his lie, ad- 
 vocates for sin, witnesses for the father of lies, 
 blasphemers, Satan-sent preachers.’” “Among the 
 pet names applied by Hill to Wesley were, ‘the 
 lying apostle of the Foundry,’ ‘a designing wolf,’ 
 and ‘a dealer in stolen wares.’ And to cap the 
 climax, the sentence of Hill’s may be quoted in 
 which Wesley is called ‘as unprincipled as a rock, 
 and as silly as a jackdaw, first pilfering his neigh- 
 bor’s plumage, and then going proudly forth dis- 
 playing his borrowed tail to the eyes of a laughing 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 71 
 
 world.’” ‘ Some of these old-time saints had what 
 approached a real genius for billingsgate, but we 
 do not reckon it to-day among their virtues. 
 
 Arrogant and extravagant claims on the part of 
 large or small sects that think themselves to be the 
 particular favorites of heaven and to have got a 
 corner on salvation are discounted to-day as soon 
 as uttered. The world has as little patience with 
 them as had Ruskin with the preacher of the type 
 that he ran across in a little chapel in Turin. “ A 
 little squeaking idiot,” he says, “was preaching to 
 an audience of old women and three louts that they 
 were the only children of God in Turin; and that 
 the people of Turin, outside the chapel, and that 
 all the people in the world, out of sight of Monte 
 Viso, would be damned!” Self-laudation is a mark 
 of decadence wherever met. Men are very defi- 
 nitely convinced that they are not to be saved by 
 right thinking merely, and that religion is not identi- 
 cal with theology: creeds, therefore, do not hold 
 the pre-eminent place that once w'as accorded them. 
 A form of church polity, also, like a horse, “is a 
 vain thing for safety.” It is growing harder every 
 year to maintain the denominational fences. De- 
 plore it though we may, members of one commun- 
 ion, upon changing their residence, pass with in- 
 
 '"The Battle of the Saints,” G. F. Greene, Outlook, April 26, 1902, 
 p. 1012. Quoted in What Must the Church Do to be Savedf by F. Marion 
 Simms. 
 
72 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 creasing ease into membership in another, and are 
 not held as strongly as at one time by the distinctive 
 features of the sect to which they gave their first 
 allegiance. They join with a growing frequency 
 the nearest church, or that which they think is ful- 
 filling with most efficiency what they believe to be 
 the real mission of religion. And while the most 
 apparent differences between the churches are losing 
 something of their significance, other marks of 
 divergence are appearing. Every communion has 
 its liberal and conservative wings, and, as the 
 perpendicular lines between denominations grow 
 more faint, the horizontal lines of cleavage which 
 cut through them all appear more clearly. There 
 is often more real sympathy and spiritual fellow- 
 ship between liberals or conservatives of dif- 
 ferent denominations than exists between liberals 
 and conservatives within a single body. This is a 
 phenomenon of much significance, the ultimate con- 
 sequence of which it is too early to prophesy. 
 
 Such indications suggest that there is to come, 
 perhaps within our time, a startling realignment of 
 Christian forces. The world of thought and of ac- 
 tion moves with a bewildering rapidity. Ideas rise, 
 gain acceptance, spread, and are now put into exe- 
 cution within a period incommensurably more brief 
 than the process would have taken half or even a 
 quarter of a century ago. We catch our breath at 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 73 
 
 the speed at which the world of thought is moving. 
 Witness the changes in political ideals and practices 
 in recent years both in our own country and through- 
 out the world. Democracy in England advances 
 with giant strides. Oriental Japan is transformed 
 within a decade, and has become a world power. 
 “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay,” 
 we used to quote; but China has overtaken Europe 
 and has turned face about almost in a night. In 
 America the political and social radicalism of yester- 
 day is the conservatism of to-day. The impossible 
 is becoming the actual, and the dream of the political 
 prophet having been achieved becomes the basis of 
 more radical proposals still. The world is rapidly 
 coming to the conclusion that what is right is pos- 
 sible, and the laggard faith of the Church is being 
 shamed into action. If a larger measure of Chris- 
 tian unity is right, if it is the ideal of the Lord of the 
 Church, then it must come, and none can say it nay. 
 
 We may profitably sit at the feet of the Christian 
 Chinese in such a matter. Free from the prejudices 
 that have been inherited from the past by the Chris- 
 tians of the West, it may well be that they are able 
 to judge more impartially than we as to the character 
 of the causes that divide us. If these men, many of 
 whom have proved their sincerity and fidelity to the 
 Christian faith by tests more severe than any to 
 which we have been subjected; if they, who are as 
 
74 
 
 THE UNION OF CHKISTIAN FORCES 
 
 able intellectually as ourselves, and who have been 
 willing to lay down their lives for the faith, have 
 deliberately concluded that the differences that 
 divide our Western Christianity into fragments are 
 non-essential, it may be worth while for us to recon- 
 sider them. And if we can contemplate without 
 alarm the disappearance of our points of difference 
 in the churches we have founded in Eastern lands, 
 is it too much to conclude that they need not, in 
 their present form, be perpetuated forever in the 
 West? 
 
 Surely there is possible a fellowship and co- 
 operation of the closest nature which does not re- 
 quire the slightest unfaithfulness to individual 
 convictions. Already in some of our theological 
 seminaries students of many denominations gather. 
 They study homiletics, theology, church history, 
 ethics, and sociology together: in such subjects 
 there is general agreement. Upon the subjects 
 wherein there is disagreement, special teachers are 
 appointed who present the points of view of particu- 
 lar denominations. It happens, as was to be ex- 
 pected, that the students come forth to take up the 
 work of the denominations to which they belong, — 
 Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Method- 
 ists, or Episcopalians, — as they entered, but wiser 
 and broader, with a richer experience and a wider 
 sympathy and fellowship, through contact with 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 75 
 
 those of other faiths. A large measure of co- 
 operation in theological education is already pos- 
 sible. Will the witness of the denominations to the 
 peculiar truths which they conceive themselves 
 severally to hold in trust be weakened if they mingle 
 together in fellowship, worship, and service? Is it 
 not at least conceivable that a Baptist’s testimony 
 to the symbolism and spiritual value of the apostolic 
 mode of baptism, or a Presbyterian’s witness to the 
 necessity of a sound theology, or an Episcopalian’s 
 emphasis upon institutional religion would be quite 
 as potent for good if they freely united in a single 
 church, for worship and service, as it can possibly 
 be while each remains a member of a church com- 
 posed of those only who already have identical 
 thoughts and is fenced off from contact with those 
 who differ? Differences of conviction, quite as 
 serious as any that divide denominations from one 
 another, are frequently found within the membership 
 of a single denomination without any impairment of 
 fellowship. Why may not members of several 
 denominations, therefore, unite without discord in 
 a community church, each retaining liberty to speak 
 the truth in love as he sees it, and to adhere to his 
 distinctive theology? One of the causes of our 
 divisions lies in the fact that they arose in an age 
 when our modern methods of intercommunication 
 were unknown, and men with different conceptions 
 
76 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of truth could not easily meet; and truth is not 
 learned in isolation. The yeast must be mixed with 
 the lump if it is to leaven it. One of the penalties 
 of our separation is that we fail to understand each 
 other, and to appreciate the truths that we severally 
 hold. A community church in which various 
 denominations combine ought to develop a new and 
 more comprehensive theology and polity and prac- 
 tice, as it absorbs the best that each of its constituent 
 elements has to contribute. 
 
 Whatever the method, some way must be found 
 by which Christianity can meet its problems with 
 united front. The present stress of the Church has 
 made it hospitable to the thought of the unification 
 of its forces. “To be enthusiastic about the Church 
 in its present condition,” writes Prof. A. B. Bruce, 
 “is impossible.” “There is such a thing as a relig- 
 ious crisis in America,” says a careful observer, 
 “however much we may scoff at the idea.” In view 
 of the serious problems which the Church is facing — 
 the arrogance of vice, the federation of all forms of 
 evil, the growth of unbelief and indifference, waning 
 congregations, the alienation of the workingman — 
 how pitifully small and sad seem its fine discrimina- 
 tions of doctrine, its ecclesiastical frills and furbelows, 
 its liturgical refinements and delicacies of deport- 
 ment in worship, its petty scruples as to washing of 
 cups and pots and tables, its Pharisaic pretensions 
 
THE PASSING OF THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT 77 
 
 and hairsplittings, its competitive ambitions, its 
 insistence upon forms and ceremonies, and its dis- 
 putes as to the possession of the requisite authority 
 to do the things that so greatly need to be done, 
 which are the cause or the effect of its unfortunate 
 divisions! Like the American colonies in the days 
 of the Revolution, the churches of America must 
 hang together or they will hang separately. It is 
 imperative that they should make up their differ- 
 ences and join ranks. As the British ships drew near 
 the French at the battle of Trafalgar, Admiral 
 Nelson called to his flagship captains, Collingwood 
 and Hardy, who up to that time had been bitter 
 enemies, and commanded them to shake hands, 
 saying, as he pointed to the French ships of the line, 
 “Gentlemen, there is your enemy!” 
 
 If an effective co-operative union of Christian 
 forces is possible anywhere in the world, surely it 
 should be possible in America. In a free and demo- 
 cratic country, where, in theory at least, every man 
 counts for one and no man for more than one, whose 
 political institutions are founded upon the town 
 meeting, where men of every faith and of different 
 ideas meet to further the interests of the com- 
 munity, setting aside their personal preferences and 
 submitting to the will of the majority, the ability 
 to think and act in common is instilled into the very 
 blood. Here is no established Church to foster 
 
78 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 bitterness or create jealousies. Freedom of religious 
 conviction is guaranteed to every citizen. Here are 
 the opportunities of a country a large part of which 
 is still new, and the pressing needs of great frontier 
 districts still unsupplied with religious privileges. 
 
 There is possible a co-operative union which sacri- 
 fices nothing that is essential, and slowly we are 
 finding our way toward it. He who furthers this 
 end, however slight may be his contribution, is 
 engaged in the noblest work to which he can set his 
 hand. “To effect one real step in the direction of 
 reunion,” said Mr. Gladstone, “after the results of 
 the last five hundred years, would be enough to lead 
 any man to lay down his head and die contentedly.” 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
Place of love in Christian unity. — Study of church history 
 conduces to unity : it reveals both imperfections and triumphs 
 in each denomination. — Teaching of the New Testament and 
 example of the apostolic Church. — Group individuality. — 
 Unity of Christian scholarship. — Doctrinal unity. — ^Ethical 
 unity. — Unity in charitable activities. — Unity in the aim and 
 purpose of the Church. — Christian love the secret of unity. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 Specific plans and programs for the unification 
 of the forces of Christendom are advanced on every 
 hand; but before any one of these can be put into 
 'operation, however practical it may be or theoreti- 
 cally wise, there must be a more thorough cultiva- 
 tion of the spirit of Christian love. The unity for 
 which we pray, when it comes, will not be a manu- 
 facture, but a growth. Like the Kingdom of God it 
 “cometh not with observation: neither shall they 
 say, Lo, here! or lo, there!” for, behold, the sub- 
 stance of Christian unity “is within you.” World 
 Conferences on Faith and Order, Chicago-Lambeth 
 Proposals, Denominational Commissions on Comity 
 or Christian Union are, without doubt, helpful; but 
 these never can accomplish anything unless they 
 find within the churches a deepening spirit of Chris- 
 tian love to which they can make their appeal. The 
 consummation of any scheme of union, whether of 
 local churches or of denominations, would be, like 
 a marriage without affection, a calamity and fore- 
 doomed to failure, if it were not the fruit of Christian 
 love. And love cannot be forced or hurried: it 
 
 6 
 
 81 
 
82 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 must lead, not follow. The spirit of co-operation 
 is not always most prevalent where circumstances 
 seem most to favor it. It is less evident, sometimes, 
 in communities of few churches that do not need to 
 compete than in others of many churches in which 
 competition can hardly be avoided. No apparent 
 necessity can compel churches or denominations 
 into co-operation where the spirit of love is lacking. 
 Never were truer words spoken than those of John 
 Owen, one of the greatest of Puritan divines, when 
 he said, “I should be very sorry that any man living 
 should outgo me in desires that all who fear God 
 throughout the world, especially in these nations, 
 were of one way as well as of one heart. I know 
 that I desire it sincerely. But I verily believe that 
 when God shall accomplish it, it will be the effect 
 of love and not the cause of love. There is not a 
 greater vanity in the world than to drive men into 
 a particular profession and then suppose that love 
 will be the necessary outcome of it; to think that 
 if, by sharp rebukes, by cutting, bitter expressions, 
 they can drive men into such and such practices, 
 love will certainly ensue.” 
 
 It would be worse than useless for the denomina- 
 tions to come together in organic unity until they 
 have so far reached a common understanding that 
 it would be possible for them to live and labor 
 harmoniously together. The situation that would 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 83 
 
 result, if so premature a union were effected, would 
 be as awkward as that described by the Russian 
 fabulist, Ivan Kriloff, in his story of The Swan, the 
 Crayfish, and the Pike: 
 
 “A crayfish, pike, and swan agreed one day 
 To pull a cartload all together; 
 
 So, harnessed each to his own tether. 
 
 They pull with might and main! 
 
 Alas! ’Tis all in vain! 
 
 The load seemed light enough; but in the sky 
 The swan soared high; 
 
 The crayfish always backward ran. 
 
 And, in the pond, the pike to pull began. 
 
 Which was to blame? Which right? W^ cannot say; 
 But still the cartload stays there, to this day!” 
 
 The largest contribution that any man can make, 
 therefore, to the cause of Christian unity at this 
 stage in its progress is the promotion of mutual ac- 
 quaintance, understanding, and appreciation among 
 the divided communions of Christendom. The ig- 
 norance of intelligent men as to the spirit and tenets 
 of other denominations than their own is as curious 
 as it is sad. There is no ardent denominationalist 
 who has not, at times, been chagrined at the misrep- 
 resentation that his denomination has suffered at the 
 hand of some sincere but ignorant representative of 
 another denomination; and such misrepresentation 
 tends, as much as any other single cause, to per- 
 
84 THE UNION OF CHKISTIAN FORCES 
 
 petuate the spirit of division. Every seminary 
 curriculum ought to contain, together with a course 
 upon comparative religions, a course upon compara- 
 tive denominationalism. Instinctively we shrink 
 from what is strange and unfamiliar, and friendship 
 is impossible without acquaintance. We should 
 find ourselves much more closely in agreement with 
 those of other Christian bodies if only we fully 
 understood them. The Talmud says: “Walking on 
 the mountains one day I saw a form which I took to 
 be a beast; coming nearer I saw it was a man; 
 approaching nearer still I found it was my brother!” 
 We never can understand our neighbor until we get 
 his point of view. Standing by his side and looking 
 at truth from his angle, it is marvelous how reason- 
 able his views appear. Again and again, in the 
 reports of the Continuation Committee Conferences, 
 lately held in the Orient, stress is laid upon the im- 
 portance of mutual acquaintance and the mutual 
 esteem and understanding that flow from it; as at 
 the China National Convention at Shanghai, where 
 one of the resolutions called for “the fresh study by 
 all Christians of the faith and order held by those 
 who differ from them, in order to promote cordial 
 mutual understanding; and the holding of local 
 conferences from time to time for the discussion of 
 the important subject of Christian unity. 
 
 * The Continuation Conferences in Asia, p. 329. 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 85 
 
 Many influences to-day are drawing the churches 
 together. Among these must be counted the fuller 
 light that is being thrown upon the history and 
 origin of the Christian bodies. An impartial study 
 of Christian history is a great destroyer of both 
 pride and prejudice. It will destroy pride, because 
 no perfect church is discovered anywhere in the 
 record. The earliest church-members were charged 
 with grievous sins in the writings of their leaders. 
 There are few churches which have not been perse- 
 cutors in their turn, and those not employing the 
 carnal weapons of fire and sword have been guilty 
 of misrepresentation and bitter controversy. On the 
 other hand it will destroy prejudice, because the 
 story of every church is fragrant with the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice and adorned by noble lives that have 
 been lived within its fellowship. All modern lines 
 of spiritual descent are seen to converge in the first 
 century; all the divided branches of the Church 
 inherit the tradition of the unbroken unity of the 
 first disciples of the Lord. All modern communions 
 claim as their own the great leaders of the early 
 centuries. Christ’s presence has been manifest 
 in every church and in every age. The study of 
 history, therefore, wonderfully softens asperity. 
 Viewed from a distance remote from the occasions 
 of division and strife, the causes of controversy lose 
 their sharp angles: distinctions, once seen in bold 
 
86 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 relief, melt into one another in the mellow light of 
 time. Many a divisive theory has been proved to 
 be untenable as the results of historical study have 
 become more accurate. 
 
 Modern scholarship, as applied also to the study 
 of the Bible, makes strongly for Christian unity. 
 It reveals in a stronger light the unity that pre- 
 vailed in the primitive Church, and upon how broad 
 a basis it rested. The unity of the first disciples was 
 evidently founded, not upon identity of theological 
 belief, for there was more than one school of thought 
 in the Church of the apostles, nor upon uniformity in 
 church polity, since every form of organization may 
 find its prototype in apostolic times, nor upon simi- 
 larity in forms of worship, for, side by side with the 
 freest expression of religious emotion, fragments 
 of liturgy and creed are found embedded in the in- 
 spired writings, but upon loyalty to the one Lord 
 of the Church, and on fidelity to the cause of his 
 kingdom on earth. It was “unity of the Spirit in 
 the bond of peace,” unity amid diversity, and com- 
 patible with the fullest liberty of development. It 
 consisted in no hard-and-fast mechanical uniformity 
 of method imposed by heaven according to a pre- 
 arranged plan, but was the outgrowth of experience 
 and the instrument of efficiency. As the method of 
 the early Church was plastic and adapted to the 
 particular conditions with which it dealt, so there is 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 87 
 
 nothing in God’s Word that forbids further adapta- 
 tions of method to new conditions as they appear. 
 Its emphasis is upon unity, and not upon the means 
 by which unity shall be secured; and he who sacri- 
 fices the end to a mistaken loyalty to a method is 
 false to the spirit of the Bible. We are beginning 
 to see that the great laws of social evolution that 
 shaped the institutions of Old Testament times 
 apply also to the period of the formation of the 
 Church and to its history through the ages, and that 
 many of the incidents of that history and of the 
 particular forms that characterized it are accidental 
 and not essential. 
 
 The older view of the Bible, with its doctrine of a 
 mechanical and verbal inspiration and a completed 
 revelation, has tended to perpetuate the divisions 
 of Christendom: the modern view that the Scrip- 
 tures contain the record of a progressive revelation, 
 communicated through the experiences of men 
 dominated by the influence of the Spirit of God, 
 promises to be among the most potent of future 
 influences making for the unity of the Church. The 
 temptation of those who held the earlier view was to 
 attempt to harmonize the various conceptions of 
 truth presented in the New Testament, to abstract 
 from each its points of distinction and individuality, 
 and to “conventionalize” them into a single pattern 
 or summary of doctrine to serve as a standard of 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 orthodoxy for all time. There could be little room 
 for differences of conviction as to either doctrine or 
 polity within a Church dominated by such a method. 
 Naturally those who could not subscribe to the 
 standards were forced out of the Church. The 
 modern view, which recognizes a development of 
 doctrine within the New Testament, and differences 
 of conception among the leaders of the early Church, 
 finds larger room for variations of belief within the 
 Church to-day, and for a continued development 
 within it, in both doctrine and polity, under the guid- 
 ance of the Spirit of God. God has not made here 
 and there, only, a revelation of himself to man. 
 Such revelations are not confined to particular ages, 
 nor to a single collection of books, nor are they re- 
 stricted to a single method. God is continually 
 revealing himself and his purposes, and in every suc- 
 ceeding age more fully and clearly, as men are better 
 able to receive them. “God, having of old time 
 spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers 
 portions and in divers manners,” hath in these days 
 spoken unto us, who, like the apostles and the 
 prophets of old, may enjoy the influences of his 
 indwelling Spirit. To the Christian consciousness 
 may come to-day new truths that shall develop new 
 forms through which they shall express themselves. 
 We have a right to trust the guidance of that Spirit 
 of God who is to lead the disciples of Jesus into all 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 89 
 
 the truth. And while the old light will not be 
 quenched, but made incomparably brighter by the 
 new illumination, it is conceivable that new revela- 
 tions may compel us to discard some of the old forms 
 and formulas, old polities and dogmas, and con- 
 struct new. “The Holy Spirit,” writes Professor 
 Herrmann, “works synthetically, not analytically, 
 and the composition of the New Testament clearly 
 shows this. If Christians seek unity by means of 
 unalterable doctrine, then they must give up the 
 authority of the New Testament. For in the 
 New Testament there is no unalterable doctrine 
 which embraces the whole scheme of Christian 
 thought. ... It is no imperfection, it is rather an 
 excellence, and thoroughly as it should be, that the 
 epistles of the New Testament are messages for 
 definite circumstances, and not contributions to a 
 doctrinal system which shall be valid to all eternity.”^ 
 Favorable to the cultivation of such a spirit of-*^ 
 fellowship as is essential to the fullest unity of the 
 Church, is the clearer recognition of the measure 
 of unity that already prevails among Christians. 
 Members of a single denomination constitute a 
 community that is bound together by all they 
 jointly possess. There is a sense of likeness, a 
 unanimity of thought, among its constituents; a 
 realization of group individuality that arises from 
 
 1 Communion with God, p. 9, 
 
90 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 participation in the same convictions and ac- 
 tivities, and in the same memories and hopes. 
 This group individuality rests in a sense of the 
 continuity of the past, now stored in memory, and 
 of the future, now conceived in terms of hope and 
 expectation, with the present, all within a single 
 consciousness. Such a condition of oneness charac- 
 terizes every separate body of Christian people. 
 Similarly ail Christian churches are bound together 
 in a larger and more inclusive individuality, sharing 
 with one another a vast fund of Christian truth more 
 fundamental than their differences, and the mem- 
 ories, hopes, and expectations that belong to Chris- 
 tians of every name. There is a “communion of the 
 saints” that is very real in spite of all differences 
 among them. There is a “Holy Catholic Church” 
 that transcends all artificial boundaries, whose uni- 
 fying elements are a common vital energy, a general 
 history, and a mutual ambition for the future. How 
 rich is the heritage of this community, how vigor- 
 ous this interpenetrating life, and how harmonious 
 its aims! And the strongest of all the bonds that 
 unite those that enter into it is loyalty to one Lord 
 and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The same sun shines 
 in London and in New York: it is not the same 
 sunshine, but it is the same sun ; and every eye that 
 gazes upon it, and every frame that feels its warmth, is 
 thereby united with every other over the whole earth. 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 91 
 
 There is a unity of Christian scholarship that ig- 
 nores denominational divisions and seeks only the 
 truth — the whole truth. “The lovers of the truth 
 are one.” The modern Revised Bible in English, 
 as Dr. Schaff has pointed out, is a noble monument 
 to a united Christian scholarship, representing, as 
 it does, the harmonious labors, through fourteen 
 years, of about one hundred British and American 
 scholars of various affiliations — Episcopalians, In- 
 dependents, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, 
 Friends, and Unitarians. 
 
 There is already a degree of doctrinal unity among 
 the great evangelical bodies of Christendom. Differ 
 as they may in dogma and theology, they agree in 
 the fundamental articles of faith that are necessary to 
 salvation. All believe in the one Father in heaven, 
 in the one Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, all accept 
 the same Bible, and can repeat together the Apostles’ 
 Creed. There is also a devotional unity : all worship 
 the same God, revealed in Christ; all pray together 
 in the words taught them by their Master, and sur- 
 round the same throne of grace. In sacred song 
 they unite hearts and voices in the great hymns of 
 the Church universal, by whomsoever they may have 
 been written, whether it be “Rock of Ages,” by 
 Toplady, the Calvinist; or “Jesus, Lover of My 
 Soul,” by Wesley, the Methodist; or “In the Cross 
 of Christ I Glory,” by Bowring, the Unitarian; or 
 
92 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 “Hark! hark, my soul!” by Faber, the Roman 
 Catholic. 
 
 There is also an ethical unity. All revere the same 
 qualities of Christian character, though they may 
 arrange them in different orders of precedence. All 
 cultivate the fruit of the Spirit as defined by the 
 apostle, and acknowledge Jesus as the model Man. 
 All accept the Ten Commandments as interpreted 
 by Jesus and believe the whole law to be fulfilled 
 in love to God and neighbor. Books on Christian 
 ethics are not dependent for their value upon the 
 denominational creed of their authors, but upon the 
 fidelity with which they represent the spirit and 
 teaching of Jesus and reflect the contents of the 
 Christian consciousness. 
 
 There is unity, moreover, in the forms of activity 
 to which Christian charity incites. “Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld” — I quote from James Freeman Clarke — 
 “has a little apologue to show that charity, or love 
 to man, is the same thing in all sects and churches. 
 A mother is walking with her little boy on Sunday 
 in the streets of a large city. The street is filled 
 with people who turn into different churches, — some 
 into the Established Church, some into the different 
 chapels. And the little boy wonders why, since 
 they have the same Master, they should go in such 
 different directions. But when the services are 
 over, and the people are on their way home, a man 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OP CHRISTIAN UNITY 93 
 
 falls in the street with a sudden attack of illness; 
 and then a Presbyterian runs and lifts him from the 
 ground, a Methodist runs for a doctor, a Baptist 
 gets water and bathes his forehead; and the mother, 
 turning to her little boy, says, ‘You see, my child, 
 that though their modes of worship are different, 
 their charity is the same.’ ” Men separate for their 
 services but unite for service. 
 
 Finally, there is unity in the conception of the 
 fundamental aim and purpose of the Church that 
 is held by all branches of it. All would agree that 
 the function of the Church is the establishment 
 upon earth of the kingdom of God, defined as the 
 rule of God in the hearts of men. A social state in 
 which all men live as children of the Father in heaven, 
 and brethren one of another, is the dream that all 
 communions cherish in common. Differ as they 
 may, the united desire of all the churches is to infuse 
 into men the spirit of the Christ until it transforms 
 all hearts, transfigures all human institutions, and 
 redeems man and society. Not in the fact that 
 “we are all trying to get to the same place here- 
 after,” as is so often fatuously said, but in the fact 
 that we are all living together in the same place here, 
 and that it is not now a satisfactory place to live in, 
 lies the basis for unity of program and action for the 
 Church. Men may conceive that separate heavens 
 will be provided hereafter, but there is no question 
 
94 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 that the fates of men are bound up together here 
 where 
 
 “Rich men hate the poor, who curse the rich, 
 
 Who agonize together, rich and poor, 
 
 Over and under in the social spasm 
 And crisis of the ages.” 
 
 There is very general agreement that if the world is 
 to be made over into the kingdom of God, it must be 
 by all men of good-will working together. 
 
 Such a conception of the mission of the Church 
 forms the basis of a union immediately possible, and 
 suggests the means by which a unity still more com- 
 plete may be achieved. Union of effort for the ac- 
 complishment of the practical program of the 
 Church may not only be undertaken at once, but 
 will open the way for other forms of co-operation 
 and federation hardly conceivable at present. 
 Absolutely nothing counts in Christendom but 
 Christlikeness : that alone is essence; the remainder 
 is accident. When Christians thoroughly appreciate 
 this and accept it with all its consequences, they will 
 be willing to agree also that all that helps the de- 
 velopment of Christlikeness in men and nations 
 should be approved and accepted, and that that 
 which is discovered to advance it most should be 
 adopted by all. In proportion as the efforts of 
 Christian men the world over are directed, not to 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 95 
 
 the building up of particular institutions, at the 
 expense, it may be, of others, or to the formulation 
 of creeds, but to doing the things that Jesus came 
 to do, to lifting up the lives of men, in that propor- 
 tion denominational differences will sink into in- 
 significance as unworthy the place they have occu- 
 pied in modern thought. “All classes of Chris- 
 tians,” said David Livingstone, “find that sectarian 
 rancor soon dies out when they are working to- 
 gether for the real heathen.” 
 
 Here, at least, is a platform upon which all Chris- 
 tians can meet. We do not need to wait until we 
 worship together before we labor as one. There is 
 nothing that so promotes mutual acquaintance, 
 understanding, and esteem as co-operation in a com- 
 mon task. Said the head of a great industry, after 
 some months of work upon the board of directors of 
 a philanthropic society among whom were some of his 
 own workmen, “These workingmen are a fine lot: 
 it is a pleasure to know them. When they come 
 to me in future to discuss some matter of work and 
 wages I shall feel quite differently about it, now that 
 we have become really acquainted.” Union in 
 unselfish service is the shortest road to fellowship. 
 In so far as Christian men labor together to alleviate 
 poverty, to protect the life of youth, to heal the sick, 
 and to minister to all the needs of men, they will 
 find themselves knit together by bonds of sympathy 
 
96 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 SO close that no differences in creed will be permitted 
 to break them, and the way will be opened for co- 
 operation in every form of service in which the 
 Church can engage, and for fellowship in worship. 
 The federation of Christian forces in the field of 
 social service is the first step in the direction of 
 organic unity. If such federation is impossible, 
 it is futile to hope for something closer and more 
 exacting still. Programs of church unity that 
 begin with the attempt to secure agreement in 
 doctrine and polity, and that have no patience for 
 the slower processes of education through co- 
 operation in practical tasks, are doomed to failure. 
 Mutual acquaintance, understanding, and esteem 
 must precede any form of corporate unity, and these 
 are secured best through co-operation in specific 
 endeavors. 
 
 The influences making to-day for a better under- 
 standing among the churches are many, the points 
 of attachment are multiplying every year; but the 
 process of the unification of Christendom will not 
 progress faster than does the increase of love. 
 Denominations, like metals, fuse only when at white 
 heat. There is a story of certain bridge-builders 
 who were engaged in constructing the two halves 
 of the single arch that was to span a river. From 
 either side of the river they labored simultaneously, 
 building out from the great piers on opposite banks 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 97 
 
 the two arms of the bridge that were to meet in the 
 middle. The day came when, at nightfall, the last 
 truss and girder were put into place, but to their 
 dismay the plates of the bridge were several inches 
 apart and would not meet. But the next morning 
 the sun rose above the horizon and, as it neared the 
 zenith, poured its warm rays upon all below; and 
 the foreman, walking out upon the bridge, found 
 that the two great arms of the arch had expanded 
 until they touched each other and were easily 
 riveted together. While coldness of heart drives us 
 apart, the warmth of Christian love thus draws us 
 together. The greatest hindrance to unity is lack 
 of the Christ spirit. Selfishness is always divisive. 
 ‘T didn’t get that family to come to us,” a good 
 woman was heard to say, “but one thing is certain, 
 — they will never go to the other church!” Such 
 a spirit would delay the unity of the Church until 
 the day of judgment! But when the churches are 
 possessed of the spirit of John the Baptist, when he 
 said of his Master, “He must increase, but I must 
 decrease,” essential Church unity is already achieved. 
 
 Such a spirit of sacrifice is contagious: it spreads 
 . from heart to heart. “As in water face answereth 
 to face, so the heart of man to man.” The cause of 
 Christian unity waits for the church that shall first 
 have the courage to lose its life for Christ’s sake and 
 the gospel’s; and if this spirit be there, such a church, 
 7 
 
98 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 according to the promise, far from losing its life, will 
 find it unto life eternal. When all churches shall be 
 willing thus to lose, all shall gain, and the cause of 
 the Kingdom will go forward with leaps and bounds. 
 There is a legend in the Talmud of two brothers who 
 owned in common a field upon the site on which 
 King Solomon later built the first Temple at Jerusa- 
 lem. One night, so the story runs, the younger of 
 the brothers said, “My brother has a wife and 
 children to support, while I have no one to care for 
 but myself. I will go into the harvest field and take 
 some of the sheaves of grain that fall to me and put 
 them with my brother’s sheaves without his knowl- 
 edge, that he may have sufiicient to provide for those 
 he loves.” On the same night the other thought, 
 “God has blessed me with wife and children, while 
 my brother lives alone. I will arise and take of my 
 shocks of grain and lay them with my brother’s 
 share that he may be comforted in his loneliness.” 
 Thus, in the morning, to their surprise, each found his 
 share undiminished. The next night each repeated 
 his kind deed and with the same result. On the 
 third night both brothers determined to watch, 
 and, to their mutual surprise, they met in the middle 
 of the field, each laden with his golden sheaves. 
 And God said of the spot where they embraced, 
 “This is the holiest spot I know: here I will build 
 my holy Temple.” 
 
GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 99 
 
 The cultivation of such a spirit of love ought to 
 be possible within the Church, for love is the essence 
 of religion. Religion is social comradeship. It has, 
 indeed, been said that, as a matter of fact, religion 
 has exercised a divisive influence in history and 
 has served to keep men apart. So a superficial 
 reading of history might seem to indicate. But 
 below the surface differences which it has evoked, 
 religion has been the fundamental bond that has 
 held humanity together through centuries of evolu- 
 tion, the living principle that has made of society 
 an organism. “It would be impossible,” writes 
 Benjamin Kidd, “to conceive any economic or 
 political motive influencing the human mind so con- 
 sistently or continuously, and on so large a scale, 
 and producing over so prolonged a period results of 
 such character and magnitude as that of religion. 
 It has been said of the synthetic philosophy that 
 Spencer found little place in it for systems of religion 
 except in relation to our emancipation from the past. 
 But no change which is in progress in our time as the 
 result of the extending conception of society is more 
 striking than that which is taking place in our esti- 
 mate of the influences in the evolution of society of 
 the integrating conceptions of the human mind 
 hitherto represented mainly in the great systems of 
 religion, which are thus in the deepest sense render- 
 ing society organic. It would seem as if it is these 
 
100 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 stones which the builders of social science in the past 
 have rejected that we must place now as the head- 
 stones of the corners.”^ Religion is the vital prin- 
 ciple of spiritual evolution, and religion without 
 love ceases to be religious. The “spirit of Christian 
 unity” is the spirit of love, and it is futile to imagine 
 that the unification of Christendom will ever be 
 consummated by any scheme of organization of 
 which Christian love is not the organizing principle. 
 “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.” 
 
 * Individuaiism and After, p. 27. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH 
 FEDERATION 
 
Unity best promoted by effort. — Increase in organization. — 
 The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. — 
 Work of the Commission on Social Service; on Home and 
 Foreign Missions. — -Local, State, and City Federations. — 
 Duplication avoided. — A plan for co-operation in a city. — 
 Relation of the Church to such federations. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CHKISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 
 
 The unity of the Church will never be thought out 
 until it has been worked out. “Union will not 
 come,” said a missionary in China in discussing the 
 problem upon the missionary field, “simply by good- 
 will, or by doctrinal adroitness to bring it about. It 
 will come by those who unitedly love the Lord and 
 who wish to serve him, working together.” The 
 results of the repeated attempts that have been made 
 to secure agreement in matters of faith and order 
 among the divided bodies of Christendom have not 
 thus far proved very encouraging, while the results 
 of endeavors through co-operation in all forms of 
 Christian effort in which co-operation can be secured, 
 to reach the degree of practical unity which is al- 
 ready possible, are beginning to transform the Chris- 
 tian world, and are fostering that spirit of mutual 
 appreciation and that common understanding which 
 are essential to the achievement of any form of union 
 more ideal. It is becoming increasingly evident that 
 the latter is the hopeful and logical order of proce- 
 dure. Let the churches that now find it difficult to 
 worship together unite in some great moral crusade, 
 — for the eradication of white slavery, or for the 
 
 103 
 
104 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 restriction of the evils of the liquor traffic. Let 
 the churches that can worship together, but that 
 cannot commune together; that can commune to- 
 gether, but cannot dismiss members one to the other, 
 or acknowledge the validity of one another’s ad- 
 ministration of the ordinances, organize union 
 evangelistic compaigns, and pray much together. 
 If the members of the various churches unite in 
 labor and in prayer, we need not fear but that they 
 will learn to love one another better and to see more 
 clearly eye to eye; and they will find a way for a 
 closer and ever closer union. The Apostle Paul 
 bade the Ephesian Christians endeavor “to keep the 
 unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” until a 
 doctrinal unity, sure to flow from it, should be pos- 
 sible, — “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, 
 and of the knowledge of the Son of God.”^ 
 
 The last decade has seen a remarkable crystalliza- 
 tion of the sentiment of Christian unity in the or- 
 ganization of various forms of associations, national, 
 state, and local, through which American Protes- 
 tantism may co-operate in common tasks. Fore- 
 most among these is the Federal Council of Churches 
 of Christ in America, which was organized in 1905. 
 Its growth in influence and usefulness since its or- 
 ganization has been steadily advancing, until it 
 includes at the present date 29 eonstituent bodies, . 
 
 1 Eph. 4 : 3, 13 ff. 
 
CHKISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 105 
 
 to which should be added the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, which is affiliated through its Commissions 
 on Christian Unity and Social Service. These de- 
 nominations thus united for service contain a total 
 of over 138,000 churches with almost 17,000,000 
 communicants, and include practically all the larger 
 Protestant bodies. The purpose of the Council is 
 well indicated in the preamble to its Constitution, 
 which states: “In the providence of God the time 
 has come when it seems fitting more fully to manifest 
 the essential oneness of the Christian churches of 
 America in Jesus Christ as their divine Lord and 
 Saviour, and to promote the spirit of fellowship, 
 service, and co-operation among them.” The limi- 
 tations of its functions are specifically stated in the 
 constitutional provision that “The Federal Council'^ 
 shall have no authority over the constituent bodies 
 adhering to it; but its province shall be limited to 
 the expression of its counsel and the recommending 
 of a course of action in matters of common interest 
 to the churches, local councils, and individual Chris- 
 tians. It has no authority to draw up a common 
 creed, or form of government or worship; or in any 
 way to limit the full autonomy of the Christian^ 
 churches adhering to it.” Yet under these limita- 
 tions the influence it has exerted upon its constituent 
 bodies and upon public opinion at large has been a 
 steadily increasing factor in the religious and moral 
 
106 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 life of the country. Through it the united voice of 
 Protestantism has been heard for the first time in 
 A America, upon the great moral questions that con- 
 j cern the welfare of all the people. Various practical 
 ^ undertakings have been successfully prosecuted, 
 such as no single denomination could have accom- 
 plished alone, and great causes have felt behind 
 them, through its activities, the united force of the 
 churches. Through the Federal Council, which 
 meets quadrennially and which consists of about 
 400 qualified delegates, the degree of unity that 
 already exists has been impressively exhibited, and 
 the movement toward a still more effective union 
 has been greatly stimulated. The scope of the work 
 of the Council is indicated by the names of the Com- 
 missions through which it is accomplished, which are 
 as follows; State and Local Federations, Foreign 
 Missions, Home Missions, Religious Education, 
 Social Service, Evangelism, Family Life, Sunday 
 Observance, Temperance, and Peace and Arbitra- 
 tion. Three of these Commissions, — those on Peace 
 and Arbitration, Evangelism, and Social Service, — 
 employ executive secretaries in the direction of their 
 work. The general work of the Council is conducted 
 by a secretary, the Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, with 
 an office in New York, and an associate secretary, 
 the Rev. Henry K. Carroll, with an oflBce in Wash- 
 ington. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 107 
 
 It is natural that thus far the work of the Com- 
 mission on Social Service should have been the most 
 largely developed and fruitful. In this field all the 
 constituent denominations, however varied their 
 ecclesiastical polity and creedal statements, find a 
 platform upon which they may stand and labor 
 together. At the quadrennial meeting in Chicago 
 in 1913 the Council adopted as its social creed a 
 comprehensive statement so admirable and so far- 
 reaching in its outlook that it will furnish for the 
 Christian forces of America a program of social 
 service that will sufiice for years to come. The 
 Council affirmed that the Churches must stand: 
 
 1. For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all 
 stations of life. 
 
 2. For the protection of the family, by the single stand- 
 ard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of 
 marriage, and proper housing. 
 
 3. For the fullest possible development for every child, 
 especially by the provision of proper education and recreation. 
 
 4. For the abolition of child labor. 
 
 5. For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women 
 as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 6. For the abatement and prevention of poverty. 
 
 7. For the protection of the individual and society from 
 the social, economic, and moral waste of the liquor traffic. 
 
 8. For the conservation of health. 
 
 9. For the protection of the worker from dangerous ma- 
 chinery, occupational diseases and mortality. 
 
108 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 10. For the right of all men to the opportunity for self- 
 maintenance, for safeguarding this right against encroach- 
 ments of every kind, and for the protection of workers from 
 the hardships of enforced unemployment. 
 
 11. For suitable provision for the old age of the workers, 
 and for those incapacitated by injury. 
 
 12. For the right of employees and employers alike to 
 organize for adequate means of conciliation and arbitration 
 in industrial disputes. 
 
 13. For a release from employment one day in seven. 
 
 14. For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours 
 of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of 
 leisiue for all which is a condition of the highest human life. 
 
 15. For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and 
 for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 
 
 16. For a new emphasis upon the application of Christian 
 principles to the acquisition and use of property, and for the 
 most equitable division of the product of industry that can 
 ultimately be devised. 
 
 If the Council had done no more than to secure 
 the acceptance on the part of the accredited repre- 
 sentatives of the great Protestant army of a social 
 program so definite, constructive, and vital as this, 
 it would have abundantly justified its existence. 
 Protestant Christianity in America has long been 
 accused of indifference toward the social movement, 
 and to this apathy has been ascribed the alienation 
 of the workingman from all forms of organized relig- 
 ion. As the churches apply themselves seriously 
 to the task of Christianizing the world of industry. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 109 
 
 such a reproach, in so far as it has been true, will be 
 taken away. It is a great step gained that there 
 should be set before them for their guidance such a 
 statement of duty as this to which the Christian 
 conscience of America can subscribe. 
 
 The Commissions on Home Missions and Foreign 
 Missions are in close co-operation with the Home 
 Missions and Foreign Missions Councils, organiza- 
 tions of representatives of the various denomina- 
 tional societies or boards responsible for the conduct 
 of missionary work. Through the Commission on 
 Peace and Arbitration, the federated churches have 
 both spoken and labored in the interest of world- 
 wide peace with a force that has attracted the atten- 
 tion of the entire country. Lately, special efforts 
 have been made by the Executive Committee of the 
 Council to safeguard the moral and religious inter- 
 ests of the thousands of American soldiers and 
 sailors. More recently the work of the Council has 
 assumed an international aspect in the appointment, 
 at the earnest solicitation of missionaries in Japan, of 
 a Commission on Relations with Japan for the pur- 
 pose of sending “an ambassador of the churches to 
 convey a message to the Japanese people, or the 
 Eastern peoples in general, from the Federal Council, 
 as representing the Christian sentiment of America,” 
 and of extending “an invitation to some representa- 
 tive of the Japanese people to come to this country 
 
no 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 for the same purpose.” The first half of this object 
 has since been achieved in the visit to Japan, early 
 in 1915, of Dr. Shailer Mathews, President of the 
 Federal Council, and Prof. Sidney L. Gulick, as the 
 accredited representatives of American Protestant 
 Christianity. The cordial welcome given them, not 
 only by the churches of Japan, but by the highest 
 representatives of the government, local and 
 national, made it possible for them to render a 
 service of great value to the cause of international 
 friendship, and to contribute to a better under- 
 standing between the two countries. The ap- 
 pointment of this Commission “to study the entire 
 question of the application of the teachings of Christ 
 to our relations with Japan, and to promote such 
 influences and activities as shall lead to the right 
 relationships between the peoples of these two 
 nations,” marks the entrance of the Federal Coun- 
 cil into a new and larger sphere of usefulness. The 
 Council has now under advisement, also, the ques- 
 tion of the calling of a World Congress to consider 
 international relations from a Christian stand- 
 point. 
 
 The latest expression of the desire of the Federal 
 Council to promote the co-operative spirit is found 
 in its proposal of the creation of a new “Commission 
 on Federated Movements.” For the promotion of 
 the work of such a Commission, the Council lately 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 111 
 
 appointed the Rev. Roy B. Guild as associate 
 secretary. The purpose of the proposed Commis- 
 sion is indicated in the results of the Conference 
 held, by invitation of the Council, at Atlantic City 
 in June, 1915, when about one hundred leaders of 
 denominational and interdenominational organiza- 
 tions met to formulate a plan under which the agen- 
 cies they represent might be brought into harmo- 
 nious co-operation. Among the eighteen organiza- 
 tions represented were the Federal Council, the 
 International Sunday-School Association, the Mis- 
 sionary Education Movement, the Young Men’s 
 and Young Women’s Christian Associations, the 
 Laymen’s Missionary Movement, the Home Mis- 
 sions Council, the Christian Endeavor Society, and 
 various denominational young people’s societies and 
 brotherhoods. These organizations have been con- 
 ducting their campaigns, for the most part, inde- 
 pendently of one another, with consequent confu- 
 sion, conflict of dates, and unwise multiplication of 
 appeals to the churches. In accordance with the 
 recommendations of this Conference, the Federal 
 Council will appoint the “Commission on Federated 
 Movements,” choosing its members “from persons 
 eminently identified with interdenominational and 
 undenominational religious organizations,” and 
 “from persons who have had characteristic expe- 
 rience in state and local city church federations.” 
 
112 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 While the Commission will have a purely advisory 
 and unofficial relation to the organizations in whose 
 interest it is formed, it will be in a position, through 
 the cordial co-operation on their part, which appears 
 to be already assured, to render a valuable and neces- 
 sary service in the co-ordination of their activities. 
 Its special field will be the study of the history and 
 present status of federative organizations of all 
 types, national, state, and local, — to determine the 
 most effective methods of church co-operation, and 
 in what spheres it is immediately most possible, — 
 the fostering of existing city federations, and the 
 forming of such federations where they are needed. 
 
 The formation of local federations of churches 
 preceded the foundation of the Federal Council, but 
 the latter has greatly stimulated such local mani- 
 festations of the spirit of co-operation throughout 
 the land. At the last report^ there were about 
 150 such federations in the country, of which 21 
 were state organizations; but the movement 
 spreads so rapidly that statistics need contin- 
 ual revision. County federations, particularly in 
 country districts, are furthering community sur- 
 veys, and inaugurating forms of co-operation for 
 the solution of the problems that they disclose. 
 State federations, under various names, some of 
 
 * Compiled under the direction of the Commiasion on State and Local 
 Federations in 1914. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 113 
 
 them with executive secretaries giving their entire 
 time to the work of the organization, are fostering 
 co-operative effort in city, town, and country, and 
 are seeking to minimize the effects of over-churching 
 and to care for neglected districts wherever discov- 
 ered. Intensive studies of wide areas of the country 
 have been made by state federations, and the spirit 
 of denominational comity, which they express, is 
 gradually transforming the competitive spirit into 
 one of cordial fellowship in service. 
 
 Chaotic conditions of religious activity in the 
 larger cities are slowly giving way, where effective 
 federations under competent leadership have been 
 organized, before the advance of a new program of 
 a united campaign for righteousness. The city 
 gives little heed to a single voice, however powerful 
 it may be, when raised in protest against some 
 flagrant evil ; nor is it greatly stirred when an entire 
 denomination unites in protest; but when churches 
 of every name join forces and speak together, the 
 whole city listens and the powers of evil tremble. 
 Organized vice knows no divisive creeds: the saloon 
 in politics is neither Baptist nor Methodist. The 
 forces of evil know how to sink their differences in 
 times of stress, and at the first sound of battle they 
 unite for defense. The churches cannot postpone 
 practical co-operation until their differences are com- 
 posed, so long as problems of social justice cry for 
 8 
 
114 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 solution, and vice flaunts itself unrebuked, and a 
 conspiracy of evil claims our sons and daughters, 
 and corrupt political forces threaten the foundations 
 of democracy itself. The churches have already 
 learned that they can trust one another sufficiently 
 to unite to labor for law-enforcement and the en- 
 thronement of justice and righteousness in social 
 life; and with every successful attempt to work to- 
 gether in such enterprises there is secured added 
 confidence and courage. 
 
 The strength of such union is evident not merely 
 in protest and suppression; it is more effective still 
 in the promotion of practical measures for the ac- 
 complishment of the positive tasks of the Church. 
 Through practical co-operation in action, the churches 
 are discovering that in the essential things they al- 
 ready stand together and that they can work in 
 Christian love for many ends without loss or sacri- 
 fice to any. A new conception of the interdepen- 
 dence of the churches is appearing. As in the feder- 
 ated unity of the body which Paul describes, 
 “Whether one member suffereth, all the members 
 suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the 
 members rejoice with it,” so what harms a single 
 church in the community injures all the churches; 
 and any accession of strength to any church inures 
 to the benefit of the rest. So long as the function of 
 the Church was conceived to be exclusively remedial. 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 115 
 
 and the numerical addition of adherents was the sole 
 test of its success, there may have been some excuse 
 for envy and competition; but if it is also the func- 
 tion of the Church to create an atmosphere wherein 
 purity and integrity and unselfishness may flourish, 
 and in which vice shall wither and die, then the 
 larger the contribution of a single church to the 
 result, the more the churches at large will profit. 
 
 The task of the modern city church is so exact- 
 ing, aUd the failure of any single communion to cope 
 in any adequate manner with the problems that 
 press upon it in crowded centers is so apparent, that 
 the necessity of united effort is imperative. To 
 endure the waste of competition and of “overlap- 
 ping,” and the neglect of opportunity and duty 
 through “overlooking” that is consequent upon it, 
 is disloyal to the Lord of the Church. In the face 
 of the need of the world, the luxury of isolation is 
 maintained at an unwarrantable expense. We are 
 merely scratching the surface of opportunity in the 
 larger cities. The dense masses of foreign-speaking 
 peoples have hardly been touched by Protestant 
 influences. The task of instilling American and 
 Christian ideals into the immigrant population 
 must not be left to the Roman Catholic Church: 
 Protestantism also is obliged to make its contribu- 
 tion. And it is worse than folly, when the task and 
 the opportunity are so large and pressing, for indi- 
 
116 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 vidual churches or denominations to enter the field 
 without consultation with one another, or under- 
 standing what others are attempting. If a division 
 of the foreign mission field into spheres of responsi- 
 bility and influence is needed, such a division is as 
 clearly necessary in all unoccupied fields in the home 
 land. In many instances, efforts for the evangeliza- 
 tion of foreign-speaking peoples may be undertaken 
 by various denominations working together, with a 
 far better prospect of success than would attend the 
 work of a single denomination. If it is unwise to 
 carry the minutiae of our denominational differences 
 into China, is it wise to inflict them upon the Chinese 
 in America? 
 
 It is a hopeful sign of a new day that five denomina- 
 tions are co-operating in the support and direction of 
 the First Chinese Evangelical Church of Chicago. In 
 1911 there was organized upon the Pacific Coast the 
 Oriental Workers’ Association, to labor among the 
 Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, including, within its 
 membership. Baptists, Methodists, Disciples, Con- 
 gregationalists, Presbyterians, Cumberland Presby- 
 terians, Episcopalians, and Friends. One of the 
 first results of the work of the Standing Committee 
 was the transfer, with the cordial approval of both 
 the denominations interested, of a mission from the 
 Congregationalists to the Presbyterians, the former 
 having no American church in the city in which the 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 117 
 
 mission was located. The entire enterprise of city 
 missions is an inviting field for interdenominational 
 co-operation, as is illustrated by the activities of 
 the Chicago Co-operative Council of City Missions 
 which has recently been established to further 
 the following aims : the evangelization of the 
 foreign population of the city, the maintenance 
 of churches in the central portion of the city, and 
 the establishment of new churches in the residential 
 sections. 
 
 It is a function of church federation not merely 
 to unite the churches, but to separate them, to 
 extricate them from the entanglements and embar- 
 rassments incident to the competitive method, or 
 lack of method, that has prevailed in the past. A 
 vast amount of duplicative work may be avoided 
 through the assignment to each federated church of 
 a particular district or parish for which it shall accept 
 responsibility. Under such a plan an entire city 
 may be included in such areas of responsibility, 
 each church being assigned a district within easy 
 reach of its own building and, where necessary, a 
 supplementary district at a distance. If each 
 church will then canvass its district and maintain a 
 directory, constantly revised, that will account for 
 the denominational preference and church attend- 
 ance of each individual within it, caring itself for 
 the unattached and indifferent, and assigning to 
 
118 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 churches of their own faith all who express a par- 
 ticular denominational preference, such a plan will 
 go far to solve the problem both of “overlapping” 
 and “overlooking” within the city. When the 
 Church knows the people within its district as in- 
 timately as the politician knows the voters in his 
 I ward or precinct, it will be better able to serve and 
 * to win them. System saves time and strength and 
 makes for increased efficiency at a lower cost. Hap- 
 hazard methods are as inadequate in religion as in 
 business. Such a plan makes it possible for each 
 church to conduct an intensive survey of its dis- 
 trict, and to acquaint itself with the moral conditions 
 and needs of the people who dwell within it, and thus 
 to render a more intelligent and helpful ministry. 
 If a moral reform needs to be inaugurated within 
 the district, here is the instrument ready to accom- 
 plish it. A diffused and general ministry that 
 extends in about equal proportions over an entire 
 city is not likely to be so effective for good as such 
 a specialized ministry to a particular district thus 
 thoroughly understood. Under such a plan, also, 
 each church represents all the churches and is 
 responsible to all the churches for the administra- 
 tion of the district which it has accepted, and feels 
 behind it the power of the united Christian forces 
 of the city and the encouragement of that added com- 
 munity respect that always results when denomina- 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 119 
 
 tions are found working together in such actual 
 unity. 
 
 The opportunities for co-operation through federa- 
 tion are almost without limit, though the direction it 
 takes in particular localities is determined by local 
 needs and circumstances. Christian education is 
 a fruitful field for united action, as is the promotion 
 of missionary instruction and interest and, to a some- 
 what narrower extent, evangelistic effort. But the 
 field within which the churches can combine with 
 the least probability of friction is that of construc- 
 tive social service. Through federation the churches 
 may make a united impression upon the community 
 in the interest of every movement that strives for 
 human betterment, and furnish substantial aid to 
 every program of reform. The churches when 
 federated may initiate and influence the course of 
 legislation as single churches cannot, and may be 
 rallied to the support of charities and philanthropies, 
 to the cause of juvenile protection, public play- 
 grounds, and social centers; thus federated Chris- 
 tianity may lead all the forces that labor for the 
 welfare of humanity. 
 
 It has been said that such federal union is oppor- 
 tunism in religion, and it is probably true. It 
 takes the half loaf that is immediately available 
 and makes the most of it. It asks for no compromise 
 of principle or surrender of ecclesiastical claims on 
 
120 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 the part of the churches that enter it, nor does it 
 seek to commit any one of its constituent churches 
 to co-operation in any enterprise undertaken by the 
 federation where such co-operation appears inex- 
 pedient or impossible. Any church is free to with- 
 draw from such a federation at its pleasure, or to 
 withhold co-operation in particular instances while 
 retaining its membership. 
 
 State federations are, like the Federal Council, 
 associations of denominations, while county and 
 city federations may be composed either of delegates 
 from denominations or from individual churches. 
 There is,_ however, no formal or official connection 
 between the Federal Council and the state federa- 
 tions, or between those of states and the local federa- 
 tions within the states. Church Federation is a 
 general name for groups of churches variously or- 
 ganized, and stands for the loosest, freest form of 
 co-operative union possible in which efficiency, in 
 the particular kinds of activity contemplated, can 
 be preserved. Its strength lies in its weakness, as 
 the bond of love and fellowship, and the friendship 
 that springs from working together for practical 
 ends are stronger than the compulsion of eccle- 
 siastical authority. Such a form of co-operation 
 has decided limitations : it is not claimed for it that 
 it is the ideal form of Christian unity. It was 
 forced upon the churches by the immediate neces- 
 
CHRISTIAN UNITY THROUGH FEDERATION 121 
 
 sity of facing with a united front their common 
 problems and tasks, because it was the best form and 
 method immediately possible. To have waited 
 for the adjustment of ecclesiastical and theological 
 differences, and for the attainment of organic unity, 
 before attempting such tasks would have been to 
 subject the cause of the kingdom of God to irrep- 
 arable loss. 
 
 Imperfect and incomplete as are all such forms of 
 federal union, they are rendering, wherever there is 
 forceful leadership, a splendid service. Notable 
 results have been accomplished in many communi- 
 ties. It is no light thing that the churches should 
 have discovered that they can labor and pray to- 
 gether, and speak, on occasion, with a single voice. 
 Experiments in federation have drawn the churches 
 together and have disclosed the measure of unity 
 that they already possess, and, by promoting the 
 spirit of Christian love, have pointed out the direc- 
 tion from which must come any hopeful plan of 
 closer fellowship. Religion is a life of love : theology 
 is a philosophy. Religion dwells in the heart; 
 theology is of the head; and the foundation of 
 unity lies below the level at which we do our 
 thinking. 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN 
 FORCES IN COUNTRY 
 AND VILLAGE 
 
Increasing interest in social, economic, and religious aspects 
 of rural life. — Decline of the country church. — Rural condi- 
 tions under special investigation. — Possibilities and responsi- 
 bilities of the rural chimch. — Over-churched conditions. — ■ 
 Statistics concerning church competition in rural communi- 
 ties. — Fiuther facts from Board of Home Missions of the 
 Presbyterian Church (North). — Examples from New York 
 and Vermont. — ^Three forms of federation proposed and dis- 
 cussed: church federation, the federated church, the union 
 denominational chiuch. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES IN COUNTRY 
 AND VILLAGE 
 
 Among the signs of the times none is more en- 
 couraging than the awakening of a new sense of the 
 importance of, and a new interest in the success of, 
 the rural church. Through the report of the Commis- 
 sion on Country Life, appointed by President Roose- 
 velt, the attention of the entire country was called 
 to a fresh consideration of the problems and possi- 
 bilities of rural life. A new literature has suddenly 
 sprung into existence dealing with its social, eco- 
 nomic, and religious aspects, the effects of which 
 may already be seen in the rise of a more intelli- 
 gent social consciousness in many a village and 
 hamlet, and in an increase of self-respect on the 
 part of many a community. The facts are rapidly 
 being gathered that will form the basis of plans and 
 programs for the fuller development of the rich 
 resources of country life. Surveys and intensive 
 studies of particular communities reveal that the 
 conditions which prevail are not peculiar to any 
 single section, but that the problem is largely the 
 same throughout the length and breadth of the land. 
 
 125 
 
126 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Among the facts which have been brought to 
 light, however, is that of the gradual decline of the 
 country church. A wide-spread indifference to the 
 Church is prevalent everywhere in rural communi- 
 ties. The percentage of the community attendant 
 upon the services of the Church is less, in general, 
 than ten or twenty years ago, and is still decreasing; 
 nor is the membership holding its own in proportion 
 to the population. The average salary of the 
 country minister, always lamentably inadequate, 
 while it has somewhat increased in the gross during 
 the last score of years, is, as we have already seen, 
 actually less in proportion to the increase in the 
 cost of living than at the beginning of the period. 
 Among the ministers who serve country parishes 
 are to be found many of the most intelligent, the 
 noblest, and most unselfish within the profession; 
 but the proportion of those who possess the measure 
 of training adequate to meet the exacting conditions 
 under which the modern minister must do his work, 
 when the level of general enlightenment has so 
 greatly risen, has not increased. Discouragement 
 and apathy are reported from many quarters. 
 The spectacle of churches deserted, closed, and sold 
 at auction is not uncommon. The church, once the 
 center of community life, the one institution around 
 which the varied interests of the neighborhood 
 were organized, has become too often the occasion 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 127 
 
 of discord and division. With, happily, multitudes 
 of churches exceptional enough to prove a rule, the 
 church of the village and rural districts does not 
 hold to-day the place in the affections and loyalty of 
 the group to which it seeks to minister that it has 
 held in the past. 
 
 To the problems that such facts as these suggest 
 there has been brought in recent years the intelli- 
 gent consideration of a multitude of earnest men. 
 The field has been surveyed and the results of study 
 have been widely published. A growing literature 
 is being created. Conferences of leaders in country 
 life are becoming frequent. Great universities that 
 minister to a country constituency have established 
 departments under skilled leadership which are 
 devoting themselves to the study of conditions, and 
 to the dissemination of information and practical 
 suggestions that are leading to the development of 
 the latent resources of rural life. The period of 
 analysis is drawing to a close and the adoption of 
 certain positive and constructive principles is be- 
 coming apparent. 
 
 In so far as these concern the Church it is be- 
 coming evident that the rural church possesses the 
 key to the situation, occupying a place of vantage 
 from which it can do more than any other institu- 
 tion to enrich and deepen the life of the community, 
 and that, if it is to fulfil its mission and rise to its 
 
128 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 opportunity, the outlook, and spirit, and method of 
 the church must be changed to accord with the needs 
 of the new order. The rural church must get closer 
 to the soil, must serve the comrnunity at more 
 points than heretofore, recognizing with a greater 
 sympathetic discernment the actual interests of 
 those whom it would reach, and minister to these 
 with a wider intelligence and a more unselfish 
 devotion. Once more the country church must 
 become the community center, organizing about 
 itself as many as possibll of the interests of the social 
 group in which it is set, now so much more diverse 
 and complex than formerly. This is even more 
 incumbent upon the church of the open country 
 than upon that of the town or city where social and 
 intellectual opportunities are so much more abun- 
 dant. Unrest and discontent in village and hamlet 
 spring from hungers unsatisfied and legitimate 
 impulses denied expression, and the impoverish- 
 ment of life that such deprivations involve; and 
 never was there a time when larger possibilities and 
 a more inspiring mission summoned the rural 
 church to a life of service. 
 
 The unanimous testimony of those who are bring- 
 ing their experience and intelligence to bear upon 
 the solution of the problem that confronts the 
 church in the country is that the chief obstacle to 
 the achievement of its noblest possibilities is the 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 129 
 
 overlapping and competition consequent upon the 
 unnecessary multiplication of separate organiza- 
 tions. “Examples like that of the town in Penn- 
 sylvania in which, within a four-mile drive of a given 
 point in the open country,” writes Warren H. Wil- 
 son, “are twenty-four country churches, are numer- 
 ous in all parts of the country. ... In a Michigan 
 group of villages, the whole population of which 
 is seventeen hundred, there are fifteen country 
 churches in which thirteen resident ministers are 
 at work.” In many a village, whose population is 
 barely sufficient for the support of a single church, 
 there may be seen around the village green a group 
 of churches, three or four in number, standing as 
 silent witnesses to the folly of denominational 
 rivalry. Years ago, perhaps, they were established 
 by denominational agencies eager to multiply ad- 
 herents at a time when the community gave promise 
 of a growth not subsequently realized. Now, with 
 buildings erected, and constituencies gathered, and 
 local loyalties created, and sectarian convictions 
 carefully cultivated, it is difficult either to advance 
 or to retreat. A sense of denominational responsi- 
 bility to the group of worshipers that has been gath- 
 ered under the tacit promise of missionary aid some- 
 times appears to forbid withdrawal. Occasionally 
 a denomination in the field feels so strongly the vital 
 importance of the peculiar truths for which it 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 stands as conscientiously to believe that its witness 
 should be continued at any cost of men and money. 
 Sometimes it is denominational pride alone that holds 
 the fort. Progress is forbidden by the very nature 
 of the circumstances. In a constituency so limited 
 no church can advance except at the expense of 
 another. The division of the religious forces of 
 the community is so minute that every church is 
 poor, engaged in a perpetual struggle to keep the 
 wolf from the ecclesiastical door. Thus they stand, 
 three or four churches where one would suffice, a 
 waste of ministerial service, a reduplication of equip- 
 ments involving unnecessary expense of many kinds, 
 dividing the available total of religious energy; 
 and the results are what might be expected : poverty 
 drives the churches to resort to unworthy methods 
 of money-raising; salaries are so small that only the 
 less effective sort of ministers can be secured; 
 competition between churches breeds prejudice 
 and division; denominational peculiarities are ex- 
 aggerated in the very effort of particular churches 
 to provide an excuse for their existence; and gradu- 
 ally the Church as an institution loses the respect 
 and the support of a large proportion of the people 
 and is deposed from leadership in the life of the 
 community. 
 
 That a church chances to be the only church in a 
 community is no guarantee of its success; that will 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 131 
 
 depend upon efficient leadership. There is, more- 
 over, an emulation in good works between churches 
 in the same neighborhood that is wholesome and 
 stimulating under many circumstances. However, 
 it cannot be gainsaid that wherever the number of 
 churches in proportion to the population is such 
 that they struggle with one another for existence, 
 the gain of one being dependent upon the loss of 
 another, the spirit of Christian love, which is the 
 essence of Christianity, is sure to suffer strain and 
 rupture. While they do not compete with the same 
 degree of acrimony, the fate of such churches is 
 likely to be similar to that of the Kilkenny cats, of 
 whom it will be remembered that at the end of the 
 struggle “instead of two cats there weren’t any.” 
 
 The consensus of opinion is rapidly coming to be 
 that the religious needs of communities of less than 
 one thousand population are most efficiently served 
 by a single township church, unless the people are 
 scattered over a very large area. Even the needs 
 of thinly settled outlying districts may often best 
 be met by establishing preaching stations around a 
 single church center. The cost in both money and 
 members of the maintenance of several churches, 
 where one church is sufficient to minister to the needs 
 of the entire population, is convincingly shown in the 
 following statistics gathered by the Massachusetts 
 Federation of Churches in 1907 from a study of the 
 
132 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 one hundred most sparsely populated towns of the 
 state, ten towns being included in each of the 
 groups considered: 
 
 Average 
 
 
 
 Home 
 
 
 popula- 
 
 
 
 Mission 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 Members. 
 
 Income. 
 
 Aid. 
 
 Salary. 
 
 Towns with one church. 725 
 
 no 
 
 $1102 
 
 $15 
 
 $874 
 
 Towns with two churches 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Church) 
 
 71.4 
 
 781 
 
 25 
 
 687 
 
 (Town) 724 
 
 143 
 
 1562 
 
 50 
 
 
 Towns with three churches 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Church) 
 
 51 
 
 492 
 
 52 
 
 473 
 
 (Town) 725 
 
 154 
 
 1477 
 
 155 
 
 
 These figures indicate. 
 
 as the Rev. E. Tallmadge 
 
 Root, Secretary of the Federation, points out, that 
 where churches are multiplied in such communities 
 as these, not only is the efficiency of the individual 
 churches lessened, but the total cost of church 
 maintenance increases at a rate more rapid than 
 that of the increase of churches. The salaries of 
 ministers, small at the best, decrease, on the other 
 hand, with each increase in the number of churches, 
 from an average of $874 in the one-church town to 
 $687 in the two-church town and to $473 in the three- 
 church town. While the percentage of the popula- 
 tion within the membership of the churches in- 
 creases from 15.17 per cent, in the first class to 
 19.75 per cent, in the second and 21.24 per cent, 
 in the third, the increase is sadly disproportionate 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 133 
 
 to the number of churches at work and to the cost 
 per town. For, as ]\Ir. Root says, “It is apparent 
 that while the membership is increased 30 per cent, 
 by duplicating, and 40 per cent, by tripling the 
 churches, the cost per town, including Home Mis- 
 sionary aid, increases 44 per cent, and 47 per cent, 
 respectively, while the amount of aid called for per 
 town is 3| and 10 times as much!” The decrease 
 in the average number of members to each church 
 as the number of churches in the towns increases, 
 from 110 in one-church to 71.4 in two-church and 
 51 in three-church towns, may fairly be taken as an 
 indication of the degree of competition between the 
 churches which results from their multiplication. 
 If the churches, in other words, drew from the un- 
 churched population, and not from one another, the 
 average membership would be the same whether 
 there were one, two, or three churches in the town. 
 “To place a second church by the side of the first,” 
 comments Mr. Root, “increases the total member- 
 ship by only 33; i. e., of the 143 members, 110 would 
 have been secured by a single church. Does not 
 this mean that nearly 77 per cent, of the energy of 
 both churches is spent in competition? To add a 
 third church wins 11 more, and the same calcula- 
 tion indicates that almost 93 per cent, of effort must 
 be competitive. What if a fourth be added? In 
 the three smallest four-church towns, with an aver- 
 
134 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 age population of 786 instead of 725, the average 
 church membership is but 33, and the total for the 
 town is only 141; which would seem to show, as we 
 might expect, that the competition becomes so in- 
 tense and costly that four churches actually win a 
 smaller proportion than two would do.” 
 
 This aspect of the situation suggests another un- 
 fortunate result of the unwise reduplication of 
 churches in small communities. More significant 
 even than the unnecessary cost in money is the 
 waste and loss of moral influence. “Ideally,” it 
 has been said, “the Church is the social unifier; 
 practically, in many places, the churches, just 
 because there are several, are themselves the cause 
 of faction and discord.” Whatever normal com- 
 petition may be to the life of trade, we know what 
 “cut-throat” competition, that disregards the rules 
 of the game, may do for business. And however 
 good may be the purposes of the churches, the 
 competition, resulting when several are forced to 
 attempt to maintain their existence in a field only 
 large enough for one, is almost certain to provoke 
 jealousy and a narrowly sectarian and party spirit 
 that is fatal to Christian comity, as well as to alienate 
 from all the churches some of the finest elements in 
 the community. The spirit of rivalry repels the 
 indifferent observer and rubs the bloom from the 
 spirituality of those who indulge in it. Moral 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 135 
 
 leadership is incompatible with a schismatic spirit, 
 and where the energies of the churches are con- 
 sumed by the necessity of building up the institu- 
 tion for its own sake, there is no strength left for that 
 free service of the community which is the price 
 of influence. Thus the competition among the 
 churches shuts them out in many a community 
 from fields of social service where lie their largest 
 opportunities. 
 
 The splitting up of the available religious forces 
 in small communities, where they are weak at best, 
 is suicidal. The report of the survey of Ohio, made 
 in 1912 by the Board of Home Missions of the Pres- 
 byterian Church (North), reveals some significant 
 facts which throw light upon the relation of size to 
 efficiency. “The size of the membership of a 
 church,” it declares, “has a bearing upon its working 
 efficiency too direct and important to permit us to 
 neglect it here. There has been a great tendency in 
 the country to multiply churches and denomina- 
 tions far beyond the number needed. This tendency 
 is seen in the towns and villages, but its effects are 
 not so clearly marked there. There are more 
 churches in the country in proportion to the popula- 
 tion than there are in the towns and villages, and 
 especially are there more small and weak churches. 
 . . . Of the ‘town’ churches only 8.7 per cent, have 
 less than 25 members each, while 59.1 per cent, have 
 
136 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 over 100 members each. The ‘town-country’ 
 churches average a little smaller; but 43.1 per cent, 
 have over 100 members. Eighty-three per cent, 
 of all country churches, however, have less than 
 100 members each, while 21.2 per cent, have each 
 25 members or less. Here we see in its clearest 
 form the effects of strong denominational feeling 
 upon church work. In the towns the multiplica- 
 tion of denominations, while often highly criminal 
 from the point of view of church efiiciency, is not so 
 easily carried to an extreme. This, of course, is for 
 the very obvious reason that there is a large number 
 of people within an easy church-going radius upon 
 whom these churches may draw. In the country 
 the people are more scattered, and multiplication 
 of churches and denominations means the dividing 
 up of a clientele with very definite limits. Many 
 churches were found which had a mere handful of 
 members, sometimes but two or three, who were 
 holding on to the old church long after some other 
 church had come to fill the largest place in the 
 religious life of the neighborhood, a policy which 
 has very serious results. The impact of a small 
 church upon society is necessarily slight. There is a 
 momentum to large numbers. ‘He that hath, to him 
 shall be given.’ 
 
 “We may indicate this by dividing the churches 
 up into six groups according to the size of their mem- 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 137 
 
 bership, and giving the statistics of growth for each. 
 These groups will be as follows: churches with a 
 membership of 25 or less, 26 to 50, 51 to 100, 101 to 
 150, 151 to 200, and 201 and over. In each of these 
 groups there are included from 100 to 400 churches, 
 enough to show clearly the tendencies. The per- 
 centage of grow'ing churches within each of these 
 groups in the order given is as follows: 2.2 per cent., 
 16.6 per cent., 33.5 per cent., 48.2 per cent., 58.5 per 
 cent., and 79 per cent. The regularity with which 
 the increase of efficiency and ability to survive paral- 
 lels the increase in membership is very striking. 
 Obviously, the great over-multiplication of small 
 churches is one of the root causes of the failure of the 
 country churches to meet the conditions which we 
 have previously mentioned as affecting church 
 efficiency. They are unable to provide themselves 
 with resident pastors who shall give them full service. 
 They are unable to hold weekly public meetings. 
 They are unable adequately to equip themselves for 
 the work they must do. The conclusion is unavoid- 
 able that the small church is a dying proposition. 
 . . . Not until a church has at least 100 members 
 does it have an even chance to survive.” 
 
 Not all churches that are spared the disadvantages 
 of the competition of rival organizations in small 
 communities thrive spiritually, as has been said, 
 or fully meet the needs of their constituency. But 
 
138 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 where there is an average degree of consecration and 
 intelligence in the membership and leadership, it is 
 fair to say that they render a far more effective 
 service than could be rendered if their strength were 
 divided. In the recent study of two typical coun- 
 ties in New York and Vermont, already referred to, 
 the authors say, “Among the smaller communities 
 those with a single church are the only ones with a 
 spirit of good cheer in church matters. The only 
 township in Windsor county that has made a rela- 
 tive gain in church attendance and has also gained 
 in benevolence and in total expenditures is a one- 
 church township, while another one-church town- 
 ship (the only other in the county) stands second in 
 these respects. . . . The figures for attendance, 
 membership, and expenditures gathered in Tomp- 
 kins county indicate how very various the evils of 
 over-churching have become. Only four churches 
 in the smaller communities in a twenty-year period 
 have increased their activities in two or more of the 
 three lines of activity considered above. Three of 
 these are in one-church communities. The fourth 
 is a weak church. Its expenditures were small in 
 both periods, and its apparent gain in membership 
 is due to padded rolls. Attendance figures furnish 
 the best indication of the effect of over-churching. 
 In small communities with only one church there 
 was a loss of 29 per cent, in attendance in twenty 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 139 
 
 years. In small communities where there were two 
 churches there was a loss of 50 per cent., while in 
 the small communities of more than two churches 
 there was a loss of nearly 55 per cent.”^ 
 
 The cause of organized Christianity in com- 
 munities where churches have been multiplied be- 
 yond the needs of the neighborhood and its ability 
 to sustain them will never prosper until such churches 
 combine in some form of co-operative union. It is 
 imperatively necessary that the forces be united 
 if they are to win and hold the country districts 
 for Christ. Three forms of such combination have 
 been tested in various parts of the country until 
 they have passed the stage of experiment, two of 
 them applications of the federal principle, the third 
 a form of union still more complete. They are: 
 first, the church federation, such as has been al- 
 ready described, in which churches, worshiping 
 apart, unite for common tasks; second, the feder- 
 ated church, composed of two or more churches of 
 different denominations, each retaining its identity 
 and organization, but uniting for work and worship 
 under a single pastor; and third, the union de- 
 nominational church, where two or more churches 
 of different denominations are merged to form a new 
 organization allied with the denomination of its 
 choice. The results of such experiments have 
 
 * Gill and Pinchot, The Country Church, pp. 144, 211. 
 
140 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 at least demonstrated that, however serious may be 
 the differences of opinion as to the most practicable 
 forms in which Christian forces in over-churched 
 rural communities may combine, combination in 
 some form is the most hopeful means of meeting the 
 conditions that confront them. 
 
 The church federation, the federated church, and 
 the union church are related much as are friendship, 
 partnership, and marriage; they stand for degrees 
 of affiliation and identification of interest and activ- 
 ity. In communities where the problems arising 
 from the multiplication of churches are not pressing, 
 such a form of “church federation” as is described in 
 the previous chapter is as effective in the country 
 as in the city. Such organized co-operation is more 
 than comity. Comity is negative in its implica- 
 tions: while it involves the cordial recognition on 
 the part of one denomination of the Christian char- 
 acter of another, it is for the most part expressed 
 in a policy of non-interference. Comity is inter- 
 denominational courtesy: it is based upon mutual 
 respect and esteem. It is fundamental, of course, 
 to every form of co-operative effort, but it stops short 
 of such co-operation. It involves regard for the 
 rights of others, the avoidance of causes of offense 
 and of encroachment upon another’s field, respect 
 for the rules of order and discipline that prevail in 
 other communions, — in brief, all mutual considera- 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 • 141 
 
 tion owed to one another by those who are engaged 
 in a common cause. Where this is lacking, further 
 co-operation is impossible. 
 
 While comity involves friendship, a church federa- 
 tion involves friendship cemented in a formal offen- 
 sive and defensive alliance for the furthering of 
 common ends. In such organized co-operation the 
 churches concerned maintain their separate organi- 
 zations, meetings for worship and ordinary activi- 
 ties, and unite only for such common tasks as cannot 
 so well be done apart. Co-operative effort of this 
 character ought to be more easily brought about 
 and made effective in the smaller community than 
 in the larger. Although it is not a form of com- 
 bination adapted to the cure of the evils that spring 
 from a plethora of churches, it will add dignity to 
 the church in any community and immensely en- 
 hance its influence. When the churches thus speak 
 and act together, voicing the conviction of the entire 
 Christian fellowship and directing the full weight 
 of its influence toward desirable ends, the whole 
 community cannot but heed. The natural field for 
 such a co-operative federation, as has been said 
 already, lies in those broad avenues of social service 
 that lead to the purification of politics, the unifica- 
 tion of charities, the protection of childhood and 
 youth, the enforcement of law, the promotion of 
 community studies, and the passing of good legis- 
 
142 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 lation. Churches of a like spirit and method may 
 also profitably unite in evangelistic effort and stir 
 and mold a whole population as a single church 
 cannot hope to do. Such federation reveals the 
 wealth of ideals in which all the churches share and 
 draws the people of God together by the revelation 
 of the degree of unity that exists below divisive dif- 
 ferences, and prepares the ground for those more 
 intimate forms of fellowship and co-operation which, 
 in communities that are over-churched, make for 
 economy and increased efficiency. 
 
 Another form of fellowship is known as “federated 
 church,” used here to describe those combinations of 
 churches under the leadership of a single minister 
 that are common in various parts of the country. 
 From their prevalence in the Green Mountain State, 
 this has been called “the Vermont plan.” I do not 
 speak here of the combinations of several churches 
 of the same denomination under one itinerant min- 
 ister, such as have always been common, but to the 
 federation of two or more churches of different com- 
 munions within the same section served by a single 
 minister and worshiping in the same building. 
 Where churches are separated more or less widely 
 and are located in different communities, whether 
 they are of the same or of different denominations, 
 little is gained by their uniting in the support of 
 a single minister except financial strength and the 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 143 
 
 superior quality of leadership that this usually 
 secures; and even this apparent benefit is generally 
 more than offset by the division of interest, and the 
 limited time that the minister can devote to each 
 constituent field. The infiuence of a church is sure 
 to suffer when the leader of its activities is not iden- 
 tified with the community to which it ministers. 
 He must have a stake in the community, must be 
 of it, if he is himself to be, or to lead his church to 
 be, a potent factor in its affairs. 
 
 No church can thrive under “absent treatment.” 
 Merely to dip into the community at intervals, as 
 a comet into the solar system, and then retire to 
 some distant point inaccessible to his parishioners 
 until the period for return recurs, is not conducive to 
 the minister’s usefulness, either in church or neigh- 
 borhood. A district large enough to sustain a 
 church needs the entire time of the pastor of the 
 church. In the report of the rural survey of Ohio 
 made by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 
 to which reference has already been made, it is said, 
 “There still remains in some sections an outworn 
 notion that it does not require a whole minister to 
 direct a country church; that the work of a country 
 church is easier than the work of a town or city 
 church. This notion is gradually being shocked out 
 of us, and we are discovering how hard it is to suc- 
 ceed and how easy it is to fail in the country field. 
 
144 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 ... A whole minister has a big enough task to 
 keep a church alive, particularly in the country, as 
 the records well show; a fraction of a minister has 
 an infinitely more difficult task. The connection 
 of the churches on a circuit is an important factor. 
 Where the churches are so located that their respec- 
 tive parishes are practically contiguous, making one 
 large parish with several preaching points, this sys- 
 tem does not have such ill results. Where the 
 churches are so located that their parishes are quite 
 distinct and a considerable amount of travel is neces- 
 sary to go from one to the other, the situation is 
 more serious. In either event, however, the effect 
 of this systematized vivisection upon church growth 
 is unmistakable. Of all the churches with a whole 
 minister each, 60 per cent, are growing. The few 
 country churches that come in this class make as 
 good a showing as the town churches. Six times 
 out of ten the minister who can give his entire atten- 
 tion to one church succeeds in making it prosper. 
 Probably this is as high a percentage of efficiency as 
 any profession can show. Of the half-a-minister 
 churches only 39 per cent, are growing. Of the 
 third-of-a-minister churches only 35 per cent, are 
 growing, while of those churches which have one- 
 fourth of a minister or less, 26 per cent, are growing.” 
 Evidently one of the causes of the lack of strength 
 in rural churches is the non-residence of the pastors. 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 145 
 
 and the consequently fractional character of the 
 service they are able to render. The absentee pastor 
 is no more lilcely to cultivate successfully his spiritual 
 vineyard than the absentee farmer is likely to pro- 
 duce good crops. “The success of the church and 
 its continuance,” declares the report of the survey 
 dealing with conditions in Missouri, “are dependent 
 upon the residence of the minister in the parish. 
 The difficulties of the church and the danger of its 
 extinction are greatly increased by a non-resident 
 ministry.” It may at least be said in favor of such 
 a combination of churches of different denomina- 
 tions situated in a single community as we have now 
 in mind, that it generally makes possible a resident 
 ministry. 
 
 A one-minister plan has been tried in many places 
 during the past twenty years with varying degrees 
 of success. The details of method and organiza- 
 tion differ widely according to conditions. It is an 
 essential characteristic of the plan that the church 
 organizations involved remain intact, each retain- 
 ing its own denominational affiliations and con- 
 tributing to its own objects of benevolence. Usually 
 the pastors are chosen in succession from the ministry 
 of the constituent denominations. Very often, and 
 generally most widely, the union is entered into for 
 a specified time only, and may be terminated at the 
 expiration of the period at the desire of either party. 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Success under this method, it need hardly be said, 
 is impossible except upon the broadest basis of 
 requirements for church membership. If it is to 
 be truly a community church, all who love the Lord 
 Jesus and who desire to labor for the coming of his 
 kingdom must be welcomed. A successful church 
 of this type at Freewater, Oregon, reports: “Among 
 our members we now number Congregationalists, 
 Presbyterians, Methodists, Christians, Baptists, 
 German Lutherans, and Episcopalians.” The widest 
 liberty of conviction as to non-essentials, and of prac- 
 tice in the administration of the ordinances, par- 
 ticularly as to admission to the Lord’s Table and as 
 to the mode and subjects of baptism, must be per- 
 mitted, and if the convictions of the minister in 
 charge do not permit him to administer the ordi- 
 nances as the individual member or candidate for 
 membership desires, the services of a minister 
 from a neighboring parish must be sought. For- 
 tunately, such a spirit of tolerance and charity is 
 increasing every day as “the thoughts of men are 
 widened with the process of the suns.” 
 
 The advantages of such a plan are evident. 
 Many federated churches have secured a stronger 
 and better paid ministry, resident upon the field, 
 and a more adequate equipment; and this at a 
 lower total expenditure. Where there is real union 
 of spirit, such a federation is likely to take a place of 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 147 
 
 moral leadership in the community impossible to 
 any one church while the Christian forces are divided. 
 The federated church in Freewater, Oregon, com- 
 posed of a Congregational and a Presbjderian 
 church, declares after two years’ trial, “All are 
 working together in harmony, making possible 
 several things not attainable before. The Chris- 
 tian forces of the community now present a united 
 front to the enemy, and instead of discord, proselyt- 
 ing, and small numbers, union and harmony pre- 
 vail. . . . The church has attained the distinction 
 of being called ‘the town’s church.’ ... It has 
 called forth the respect and co-operation of many 
 not otherwise connected with it. It is a commu- 
 nity church, with the stamp of approval of the city 
 officers and business men of the town. The mem- 
 bership has already crystallized into a strong 
 working force for righteousness which will be far- 
 reaching in its results.”^ Similar testimony comes 
 from many quarters of the effectiveness of such a 
 form of federation under favorable conditions and 
 leadership. 
 
 An experiment of this sort, however, often encoun- 
 ters the gravest difficulties; and it is to be questioned 
 whether there have not been more failures than suc- 
 cesses in the trial of it. The odium theologicum dies 
 hard, unfortunately, and the grace of God often 
 
 * From a leaflet of information issued by this church. 
 
148 
 
 THE UNION OF CHKISTIAN FORCES 
 
 seems to be insufficiently appropriated to overcome 
 the crotchets of his children! Sectarian prin- 
 ciples, that have been so assiduously cultivated, 
 and that are so deeply rooted, are not easUy trans- 
 planted, even across the street, from one ecclesiasti- 
 cal garden-bed to another. Local rivalries with the 
 irritations that they sometimes provoke are not 
 easily forgotten, and since the churches that are 
 the subjects of federation retain their respective 
 identities, these are sometimes carried into the part- 
 nership and become disturbers of the peace. The 
 minister in charge, who must necessarily retain 
 ecclesiastical standing in a particular denominational 
 body, often seems an alien to members of the 
 denomination within the federated church to which 
 he does not belong. “The fact is,” writes an ex- 
 perienced leader in this form of church organiza- 
 tion, “that when a Methodist is on the field, if the 
 federation is between the Methodists and the Bap- 
 tists, the Baptists pray for his removal, and when 
 a Baptist pastor is on the field, the Methodists sit 
 up all night praying for his removal, and by actual 
 experience, after a five years’ test, the united con- 
 gregation is very little larger than either one of them 
 was before the federation began.” The question 
 might be raised as to whether the churches under 
 consideration have enough of the Christian spirit to 
 make worth while the attempt to federate them. 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 149 
 
 The difficulties of administration, where the con- 
 stituent bodies retain their individual organizations 
 with separate sets of officers, are often extremely 
 serious without discernible fault in any quarter. 
 A broad-minded and efficient Christian worker in 
 Vermont, where the idea originated, writes in 
 answer to an inquiry, “Federation, where two or 
 more churches get together for the support of one 
 pastor, is an utter failure in Vermont and I believe 
 will be everywhere.” 
 
 Notable results in many experiments seem to 
 promise permanent success for the federated church 
 in certain localities. On the whole, however, this 
 plan has not proved to be as successful as that of the 
 complete union of churches into a single organiza- 
 tion in affiliation with a particular denomination. 
 This, the third of the methods of federation, may 
 be distinguished as “the union denominational 
 church.” 
 
 Under such a title it is not meant to include those 
 combinations of believers that exist in some locali- 
 ties in so-called union churches that sustain no 
 denominational connection whatsoever, nor such 
 as are composed of those holding elsewhere their 
 ecclesiastical connections and uniting only for the 
 purpose of common worship. Such organizations, 
 unaffiliated with any general denominational body, 
 are deprived of some of the essentials of strength 
 
150 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 and usefulness and tend to become mere preaching 
 stations. They lack the stimulating fellowship of 
 other churches, and are without incentive to mis- 
 sionary activity or channel for its expression in 
 gifts of money or service. They tend to become 
 isolated and self-centered and out of touch with the 
 stream of religious interest and progress. 
 
 The union we are now considering is that of two 
 or more churches of different denominations that 
 unite to form a single church, either of one of the 
 constituent denominations or of some other faith 
 not represented in the combination. Thus a Bap- 
 tist and a Methodist church in a community too 
 small to support more than a single organization 
 might unite, under this plan, to form either a Meth- 
 odist or a Baptist church, or, if it should be deemed 
 wise, they might choose to become a Congregational 
 church. The essential features of such a plan of 
 union are that the churches forming the combina- 
 tion shall not retain their original identity, nor their 
 separate sets of officers, nor cut themselves loose 
 from all denominational affiliations; but shall or- 
 ganize themselves into a new church that shall be 
 a member of some one of the denominations already 
 existing, thus retaining the stimulating influences 
 of association with other bodies of Christians, and 
 sharing the world-wide outlook of denominational 
 activities and securing the beneflts of the counsel 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 151 
 
 and direction of the larger body to which they 
 belong. 
 
 The possibility of unions of this nature might 
 seem chimerical were it not for the fact that they 
 have been accomplished in numerous localities and 
 are growing more frequent. Such a plan avoids 
 most of the difficulties which the federated churches 
 are called upon to meet. It has, however, obstacles 
 peculiar to itself with which to contend. The most 
 obvious is the natural reluctance of any church to 
 relinquish its identity. Even a failure does not al- 
 ways recognize failure, and never likes to admit it, 
 particularly in the presence of an apparently suc- 
 cessful rival. Which shall be the church to sacrifice 
 its life upon the altar of efficiency? When that 
 difficult question is decided, the problem of union is 
 well on the way to solution. Blessed is that church, 
 which, in the face of the crying needs of a community 
 that only a united church can meet, has so caught 
 the spirit of its Master as to believe that with the 
 church, as with the disciple, to save life is to lose it, 
 and that to lose life for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s 
 is to find it ! 
 
 It is essential, of course, to this form of union 
 that the constituent churches shall deliberately put 
 aside all divisive denominational peculiarities of 
 polity and practice. Where conscientious convic- 
 tions prevent this, the price is continued disunion. 
 
152 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 If, for example, Congregationalists and Baptists are 
 to imite to form a Baptist church, Congregational- 
 ists cannot impose sprinkling upon Baptists, nor 
 Baptists immersion upon Congregationalists. So 
 much is obvious. There is always the possibility of 
 the establishment of a form of “associate member- 
 ship” by which unimmersed believers may be affil- 
 iated with the church, but this is to take in members, 
 as it were, by the back door, and is always an un- 
 satisfactory makeshift. Either sprinkling must be 
 frankly recognized as valid in essence and spirit if 
 defective in form, or Baptists must cease to require 
 baptism in any form as a prerequisite to church 
 membership, and receive members on profession of 
 faith alone, leaving the observance of the ordinance 
 to the individual conscience, like their open-member- 
 ship brethren in England. Similarly, if diverse 
 elements are to unite in the organization of an 
 Episcopal church, the Episcopalians must relinquish 
 insistence upon the exclusive validity of ministerial 
 orders episcopally derived on the basis of a doctrine 
 of apostolic succession. Where such concessions 
 are impossible, a union of churches is for the present 
 impossible. These are but examples of practical 
 difficulties that may arise, whatever denomination 
 may be chosen by the union of forces. It is to avoid 
 them that it is sometimes counted wise to organize 
 the united church under a denomination other than 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 153 
 
 that to which any of the churches concerned be- 
 longs. One thing only is essential: that the new 
 church, whatever its affiliations, shall be flexible and 
 tolerant, comprehensive and catholic, truly a com- 
 munity church. 
 
 This is the form of union, however brought about, 
 that holds most promise for the future. When ar- 
 ranged through state denominational agencies, or 
 by state interdenominational federations, so that the 
 denominations involved shall each gain a union 
 church where they consent to surrender a church to 
 unite with one of another denomination, it promises 
 best. As the federated church is known as “the 
 Vermont plan,” the credit for the promotion of the 
 plan of reciprocal exchange of churches between de- 
 nominations belongs to the Interdenominational 
 Co mm ission of Maine, the flrst of state church 
 federations, which has long advocated it. The re- 
 port of the Commission for 1914 declares, “Our 
 Maine plan of reciprocal exchanges was recom- 
 mended to the Federal Council of Churches of Christ 
 in America in Chicago last December by the Home 
 Missions Commission, and was approved by the 
 Federal Council as the ideal for adoption in all parts 
 of the country.” The spirit and method of the plan 
 are well described in another section of the report: 
 For the purposes of preventive and constructive 
 co-operation it was recommended : 
 
154 
 
 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 1. That the denominations, through their supervising 
 representatives, such as state agents, home missionaries, or 
 presiding elders, report to the Commission the names of 
 towns in which a union of churches may seem desirable, in 
 order that the Commission may serve as a clearing-house 
 and bureau of reciprocity. 
 
 2. That the Commission then shall consider the condi- 
 tions in these several towns, the constituencies of the churches 
 and the changes which would appear desirable for the best 
 welfare of the community, and, when the Commission finds 
 that an equitable exchange can be made so that in one town 
 denomination A ’may surrender to denomination B its church 
 interests, and in another town denomination B can surrender 
 an equal interest to denomination A, then the Commission 
 shall recommend to the two denominations such an exchange. 
 
 3. That such reciprocal exchanges shall be contemplated 
 only between those denominations which distinctly commit 
 themselves to the plan, and the interests of other denomina- 
 tions shall be in no wise molested by recommendations of 
 the Commission. 
 
 4. It is recognized that this plan requires great care and 
 consideration in its execution lest the prejudices and the 
 feelings of local church-members be ignored and ideal states 
 be sought which are not practical. Particularly must all 
 conscientious scruples be carefully safeguarded and good 
 feeling and brotherly love be preserved. 
 
 5. This plan distinctly confesses that the so-called “union” 
 churches, while approved in some places, yet incur so many 
 perils, through their lack of associational fellowship or supe- 
 rior ecclesiastical supervision, through ha'sdng no larger mis- 
 sionary interests, home or foreign, and no approved ministry 
 from which to secure pastoral care, as to be unwise organiza- 
 tions to encourage. This plan aims at consolidating religious 
 
IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 
 155 
 
 forces and leaving them within the limits of denominational 
 fellowship. 
 
 The Rev. Josiah Strong, of the American Insti- 
 tute of Social Service, is quoted as saying, “The 
 greatest need at the present time of this entire 
 movement (toward the unification of Christian 
 forces) is a practical vindication of the principles 
 and methods of church union and federation in the 
 smaller towns, villages, and hamlets.” The pioneers 
 in these experiments are rendering a service to the 
 cause of the kingdom of God that can hardly be 
 overestimated. Out of the present experimental 
 stage are to come principles and methods that will 
 guide the development of the future. Even the 
 failures are instructive as showing ways to be 
 avoided. It is something gained that we have come 
 to see so clearly the necessities that compel some 
 readjustment of religious forces in over-churched 
 rural communities if the Church is to rise to its 
 duties and opportunities. The future of the Church 
 in America and the place that it is to hold in the 
 developing life of the nation are dependent upon the 
 progress of the spirit of Christian unity. “Organic 
 church union at the top,” i. e., through the amalga- 
 mation of entire denominations, has thus far made 
 slow progress; the immediate need is a larger num- 
 ber of successful examples of the possibility of 
 “union at the bottom,” in the co-operation and com- 
 
156 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 bination of individual churches of different de- 
 nominations. The spirit of unity thus fostered at 
 the base will make its way toward the summit. 
 The greatest hindrances to-day are inertia, a narrow 
 sectarianism, selfishness, and a lack of spiritual 
 vision; but these are not inherent, and are not insur- 
 mountable. When the churches are more anxious 
 to leaven the community with a saving gospel than 
 to keep up denominational fences and to win a 
 sectarian success, they will be willing to unite on 
 essentials, whatever may become of non-essentials. 
 The foggy thinking in which we lose ourselves and 
 lose touch with our fellow-Christians wdll some day 
 be dissipated when love floods in like the light and 
 the mists and noxious vapors of the night fly before 
 the ascending sun. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME 
 MISSIONS 
 
Combinations in business world. — Obstacles to co-opera- 
 tion in home mission effort. — Past methods of operation. — 
 Conditions in the West demand the establishment of churches. 
 — Problems presented by the complex nature of the popula- 
 tion. — Successful operations of the American Sunday-School 
 Union. — Home Missions Council. — Its organization, princi- 
 ples, and operations: investigations of particular sections 
 of the country, reports of conditions as discovered. — ^Addi- 
 tional functions and powers suggested. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CO-OPERATION IN HOME IMISSIONS 
 
 Wherever we look, the competitive idea and 
 spirit, both in theory and in practice, is giving way 
 before the modern principle of co-operation. In 
 social theory and experiment, the thought of our 
 day moves from individualism toward collectivism. 
 In politics, party lines are breaking down and men 
 of diverse theories are uniting for the attainment of 
 practical ends. In the industrial, and commercial, 
 and financial worlds, combination spells success. 
 “Efficiency” is the new word on everybody’s lips, 
 and to the stern test of its requirements all the proc- 
 esses of the business world must be brought. Not 
 less must the methods of every religious enterprise 
 be judged in terms of efficiency, for the evangeliza- 
 tion of the world pre-eminently deserves the name 
 of “big business.” Waste of time and effort, re- 
 duplication, unnecessary expense of any kind are less 
 defensible here than elsewhere. The real difficulty 
 in this field, however, arises from the attempt of con- 
 scientious men to discriminate between waste and 
 necessary expenditure, and to discover how far it is 
 possible for Christian people, with their differences 
 
 159 
 
160 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of religious views, to combine their forces for 
 economy of effort. 
 
 There are peculiar obstacles in the way of full 
 co-operation between the churches in home mis- 
 sionary effort. On the frontier, denominations con- 
 test for new territory. Their prosperity and growth 
 depend upon pushing forward and occupying the 
 points that promise some day to be strategic. All 
 the motives of denominational pride and ambition, 
 together with a sincere fidelity to denominational 
 convictions and downright earnestness of religious 
 purpose, combine to urge the churches to occupy 
 the new districts at the earliest possible moment. 
 The necessity for comity and co-operation in home 
 missionary enterprises arises from the fact that these 
 impulses, working in all denominations alike, drive 
 them in the same directions, and tempt all to occupy 
 those localities that give most promise of becoming 
 centers of influence. “As soon as a town was 
 opened,” said a speaker at the Chicago meeting of 
 the Federal Council, “the denominations used to 
 hurry into it: Episcopalians in the parlor-car, 
 Presbyterians in the sleeper, Congregationalists in 
 the day coach. Baptists on the tender, and Method- 
 ists on the cow-catcher; and by the time those in the 
 passenger coaches had unlimbered, the Baptists and 
 the Methodists were building their chapels. Very 
 soon the problem was how to get some of the de- 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 161 
 
 nominations out!” For years the various sects 
 have labored at the task of winning the new empire 
 of America for Christ, each with its independent 
 plan of campaign as though it alone were in the field, 
 without consultation or co-operation, or troubling to 
 acquaint itself with the methods or results of the 
 activities of others engaged in the same enterprise. 
 
 Reassuring signs of a better day are appearing. 
 The task is so great — nothing less than the conquest 
 and development of a new nation — and the need so 
 appalling, and the results of such guerrilla warfare 
 so meager in comparison with the need, that the de- 
 nominations have been driven to join hand, and 
 heart, and will, in their common work of evangeliza- 
 tion. Here are almost 100,000,000 of the most 
 energetic and progressive people under the sun, in a 
 territory vast and rich enough to support a popula- 
 tion twenty times its size, pressing forward in an 
 irresistible tide into the sparsely settled regions on 
 the western slope of the continent; eager for gain, 
 ready for privation and sacrifice in the pursuit of 
 it, needing the touch of that idealism that alone can 
 redeem such ambition from sordid greed, and pre- 
 senting an unexampled opportunity for the minis- 
 tration of the Church which alone can furnish the 
 altruistic impulse. On the broad prairies, towns 
 spring up almost over night, and the plowshare of the 
 pioneer turning over the unbroken sod transforms 
 
 11 
 
162 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 the rolling plains into waving fields of grain. Vast 
 irrigation projects convert waste places into a luxu- 
 riant garden and cause the desert to blossom as the 
 rose. Everywhere upon the frontier, homes are 
 hardly built before schools are planted among them; 
 but the saloon and gambling house are quick to fol- 
 low in the wake of progress. If such new territories 
 are to be won for God and righteousness, the church 
 must be early upon the field and make its contribu- 
 tion to their development during the early, formative 
 years. 
 
 It is the prosperity of America that is, in part, its 
 peril. The story is told of a soldier in the army of 
 Antigonus who became conspicuous for his bravery 
 upon the field of battle. With invincible courage 
 he faced the most overwhelming odds, led forlorn 
 hopes to victory, was foremost in the charge and last 
 in retreat. Attracting the attention and admiration 
 of his officers, he was brought into the presence of the 
 general. On inquiry it was found that the man was 
 poor and afflicted with a distressing and painful dis- 
 ease. In pity the general bestowed money upon 
 him, and placed him under the care of his best physi- 
 cians, who soon relieved him of his malady. But it 
 was quickly discovered that the soldier had lost his 
 enterprise and courage. He no longer led the 
 charge. Formerly the very discomfort and suffer- 
 ing which distressed him had driven him forth to 
 
CO-OPEEATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 163 
 
 every desperate endeavor; now he sought his ease, 
 for, as he remarked to his comrades, he had some- 
 thing worth living for — health, home, family, and 
 other comforts, and life under these conditions was 
 too valuable to risk. Such is the peril of prosperity, 
 — an ignoble content, a cowardly conservatism, a 
 base materialism, a self-centered satisfaction with 
 things as they are, a blind indifference to the com- 
 pulsion of great causes, a regard for the body of 
 things and a contempt for their soul. Above all, 
 because of its prosperity and promise of material 
 good, America needs the offices of religion. 
 
 Toward this land of plenty, as to another Canaan, 
 the peoples of the older world, oppressed by poverty, 
 are flowing in a steady stream of a million or more a 
 year. As an ever-increasing proportion of this im- 
 migration comes from the south and east of Europe, 
 the problems which it offers grow more acute and 
 grave. What are we to do with these eager folk who 
 press upon us, ignorant, most of them, of our lan- 
 guage and of our institutions, with contrary social 
 and political traditions and ideals, and of another 
 spiritual heritage? What, rather, are they to do 
 with us? Are these unassimilated masses to despoil 
 our institutions and remove our landmarks, and to 
 make of the descendants of the Puritans strangers 
 in an alien land? And what shall we say of the 
 10,000,000 negroes whose ancestors immigrated 
 
164 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 against their will, and who now share our inheri- 
 tance? No scheme of colonization will solve this 
 problem: they are here to stay. The day is not 
 very far distant when these 10,000,000 will have 
 become 20,000,000. We cannot hope that the masses 
 of the negro population can remain in ignorance, 
 living in squalor and poverty, without the contam- 
 ination of such conditions spreading throughout the 
 commonwealths in which they reside. We cannot 
 have ignorance, or poverty, or vice anywhere in the 
 community without its affecting the entire popula- 
 tion. Add to these elements that go to make up the 
 urgent problem of American life, the pitiful necessi- 
 ties of the Indian wards of the nation; the menace of 
 Mormonism; and the growing numbers of those who 
 come to us from Mohammedan lands, from the 
 minarets of whose more than threescore temples on 
 this continent there daily sounds the muezzin’s call 
 to prayer; and we may see how large looms the task 
 committed to the evangelical churches of America. 
 
 Similar and related to this problem of a complex 
 population is the engrossing and insistent problem 
 of the American city, to which the larger propor- 
 tion of our immigration flows. To-day the city 
 dominates our civilization, — socially, politically, and 
 religiously. Whereas in 1800 one in twenty of the 
 population dwelt in the city, in 1900 the proportion 
 was one in three; and with the development of our 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 165 
 
 manufactures it will not be long before one-half of 
 the people will assuredly be found residing in 
 municipalities. Already one-half of the population 
 of the Empire State lives in New York City. Not 
 Springfield, but Chicago, is the political, and social, 
 and commercial capital of Illinois. America gets 
 its ideals from the city: as goes the city, so goes the 
 nation. If there is corruption in the city, the whole 
 body politic suffers. If the saloon rules the city, the 
 country will not escape. If the government of our 
 cities is the scandal of American life, then republican 
 institutions the nation over are imperiled. If there 
 is contempt for law there, the power of the law 
 languishes elsewhere. The political problem is 
 largely a city problem. A Christian civilization is 
 on trial in the city. And if the city church fails, we 
 cannot hope to redeem that failure by conquests in 
 the town and countryside. 
 
 Such conditions are a challenge to the faith and 
 consecration of the Christian Church; and it is 
 becoming increasingly evident that no single com- 
 munion is sufficient to meet them. To these vast, 
 unassimilated masses in the very center of our 
 population, who come to us from other lands, there 
 must be brought the finest products of a Christian 
 civilization. If these are to be Americanized, a large 
 share in the task will devolve upon the Church. 
 With a magnificent optimism. Senator Hoar of Massa- 
 
166 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 chusetts, shortly before his death, declared, “I believe 
 that if all Americans of native birth should die to- 
 morrow, the masses who have come to us from other 
 shores may be trusted to preserve and carry to suc- 
 cess the spirit of American institutions;” but such 
 hopefulness would be only complacent folly unless 
 adequate efforts are made to imbue these millions 
 with that spirit in its best estate. The negro must 
 be evangelized and taught, the Indian protected from 
 his weaknesses and his enemies, Mormonism checked 
 and its venom extracted, and the frontier com- 
 munities molded and inspired by the influences of 
 religion. The island possessions of the new America, 
 moreover, must be evangelized. Competition in 
 these high tasks is folly; the competitive spirit de- 
 feats its own ends. Only co-operation can win 
 America for Christ. 
 
 The pioneer among agencies which have applied 
 themselves to the solution of these problems is the 
 American Sunday-School Union, whose fruitful 
 service has extended over the last 98 years. Believ- 
 ing that through an interdenominational rather than 
 a denominational effort the Christian Church can 
 most effectively reach the isolated and neglected 
 rural districts all over the United States, it has sent 
 its missionaries into the remotest corners of the land, 
 rallying the Christian forces, however small or crude, 
 and planting union Sunday-schools to serve as the 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 167 
 
 nuclei of Christian activity. The annual report of 
 the Union for 1915 describes the labors of ten dis- 
 trict superintendents, under whom are 224 general 
 or local missionaries serving fields each covering from 
 one to a dozen counties. These missionaries are 
 constantly engaged in studying religious condi- 
 tions in their fields, especially in rural and isolated 
 districts. Where such communities are without 
 Sunday-schools, interest is aroused by house-to- 
 house visitation, teachers and officers are enlisted, 
 and Sunday-schools organized. During the year 
 covered by this report, these field workers organized 
 1,368 new schools and reorganized 687. Many an 
 abandoned church has been rehabilitated through 
 the organization within it of such a union Sunday- 
 school. “Not infrequently,” declares the report 
 for 1914, “in communities where two denominational 
 churches have been closed for years, the missionary, 
 by determining ‘not to know anything among you 
 save Jesus Christ and him crucified,’ brings the 
 people, who in the past had been in different de- 
 nominations, into one united congregation, identi- 
 fied with a denomination of their own choosing.” 
 Seventy-eight congregations were organized last 
 year and transferred from the care of the American 
 Sunday-School Union to denominational control. 
 The pioneer work could have been only non- 
 denominational in the true sense, since these 78 
 
168 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 churches were divided among 14 different denomina- 
 tions. 
 
 The organization through which the Home Mis- 
 sion Boards of the Protestant churches of America 
 are seeking to correlate their missionary forces is the 
 Home Missions Council. Organized as recently as 
 1908, it is now composed of representatives of 33 
 societies and boards connected with 21 distinct de- 
 nominations, embodying nine-tenths of the nation- 
 ally organized home mission forces. This organization 
 holds regular meetings twice a year for the considera- 
 tion of great administrative questions, and through 
 its special committees and deputations seeks to de- 
 termine the facts that compose the home mission 
 problem, and to further co-operative effort. The 
 spirit in which it pursues its task is evident in the 
 principles which, in conjunction with the Commis- 
 sion on Home hlissions of the Federal Council of 
 Churches of Christ in America, it has lately formu- 
 lated and recommended to the Home Mission 
 Boards of the denominations co-operating. It in- 
 structs its representatives: 
 
 1. To confer with like officers of other Home Mission 
 Societies or Boards and arrange to allot the entirely unoccu- 
 pied fields among the various bodies so that each shall feel a 
 special responsibility for given fields. 
 
 2. To deeline application for Home Mission aid at any 
 place where the gospel of Christ is earnestly and adequately 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 169 
 
 promulgated by others and where assured prospects of 
 growth do not seem to demand the establishment of other 
 churches. 
 
 At least ten of the national Home Mission Socie- 
 ties and Boards, including all but one of the large 
 denominations, have given their explicit endorse- 
 ment to these principles. While the spirit of the 
 administrative officers of all the leading boards is 
 in full harmony with such a program, it cannot be 
 denied that there are multitudes of people, ministers, 
 missionaries, and laymen, in every communion, who 
 have not yet reached an equal height and breadth of 
 view. It is the membership at large which de- 
 termines the actual policy to be pursued even within 
 denominations that are least democratic in polity. 
 That this is still, in many quarters, directed along 
 the old competitive lines, is not so much the fault of 
 the leaders as of the local administrators at the 
 front. 
 
 The organization of the Home hlissions Council 
 has made possible a co-operative study of the 
 various elements that compose the home mission 
 problem. During 1914, for example, the Council’s 
 Committee on Immigrant Work conducted an exten- 
 sive inquiry concerning the immigrant population of 
 the United States, including in its surveys the Bo- 
 hemians, Poles, and Magyars, and, less completely, 
 the Finns, Croatians, Serbs, Armenians, and other 
 
170 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 nationalities. The results of these studies not only 
 revealed the meagerness of the total work carried 
 on by the allied denominations, but, in the words of 
 the committee, “made renewedly clear the irrele- 
 vancy of our denominational distinctions in this 
 field, save as in a few cases the people ministered to 
 come from nations having a considerable Protestant 
 tradition.” 
 
 For the first time in the history of the home mis- 
 sion enterprise, it has become possible, also, through 
 the Council, to make careful and comprehensive 
 investigations of particular sections of the country 
 to determine the conditions actually existing and the 
 genuine needs of the fields. These studies or sur- 
 veys, made during 1913 and 1914, were initiated by 
 a deputation of board secretaries in a series of “con- 
 sultations” with members of state boards and com- 
 mittees, state and district superintendents, and other 
 field administrators of home mission work in 15 of 
 the western states. After the preliminary consul- 
 tation, each conference selected a state survey com- 
 mittee composed of representatives of each religious 
 body co-operating, wFo have been publishing the 
 results of their investigations in a series of bulletins. 
 The first deals with a general survey of the entire 
 territory under observation, including those states 
 in which the largest proportion of the funds con- 
 tributed to the treasuries of home mission boards 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 171 
 
 and national societies are applied in various forms of 
 evangelization and church extension. Later bulle- 
 tins are devoted to the results of more intensive sur- 
 veys of Oregon, North Dakota, Colorado, Northern 
 California, and Washington. WTiile the region ex- 
 amined embraces almost one-half of our continental 
 territory, only 13.7 per cent, of the total population 
 is now found within it; and while the average den- 
 sity of population for the country at large is 30.9 
 per square mile, that for this region is only 8.8. 
 During the past decade this vast territory has in- 
 creased its population at a rate double that of the 
 increase of the country as a whole, and evidently will 
 soon include a population commensurate with its 
 size. Thus is suggested something of the “civiliza- 
 tion-building, and the consequent strain upon social 
 institutions, which this region will experience in the 
 next few decades.” Not one of the states under 
 observation shows a percentage of Protestant church 
 membership to population equal to that for the 
 country taken as a whole, while six of the states 
 show Roman Catholic percentages exceeding that 
 for the entire country. 
 
 Considerable attention has been given in an 
 earlier chapter to the “overlapping” of religious 
 agencies. This is a serious condition, occasioning 
 waste of money, time, and energy. It is also the 
 cause of much hostile criticism of the Chureh and its 
 
172 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 methods. But reports of its prevalence may easily 
 be exaggerated and, as a matter of fact, the surveys 
 of the Home Missions Council indicate that on the 
 frontier, at least, it is a negligible factor in its effect 
 upon the efficiency of American Christianity com- 
 pared with that of “overlooking,” or the neglect 
 by all denominational forces of large sections of the 
 population. In an investigation of the state of 
 Colorado, made within a few years by the Com- 
 mission on Home Missions of the Federal Council, 
 while many instances of an unwise reduplication of 
 church organizations were discovered, — such as that 
 of a town of 400 people with four churches, all sup- 
 ported by home mission aid, — 133 communities were 
 reported, ranging from 150 to 1,000 souls, without 
 Protestant churches of any name, 100 of them being 
 also without a Roman Catholic church. 
 
 The study of 15 states undertaken by the Home 
 Missions Council was appropriately called “The 
 Neglected Fields Survey.” Of one of the states it 
 is reported that it may be conservatively estimated 
 that at least 458 school districts have groups of 
 people living more than four miles from the nearest 
 church, and that these groups comprise at least 
 32,796 persons. From a township in this state with 
 a population of 300 the report was received, “There 
 is not a church of any kind in the township, nor any 
 religious services of any kind. There are only about 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 173 
 
 20 Catholics and 20 Lutherans who profess any relig- 
 ion.” Such conditions are common in most of the 
 states surveyed. Of the districts in Oregon report- 
 ing, 54.1 per cent, have no church or Sunday-school 
 activities, and it is estimated that 33,000 school 
 children in the state reside in districts not supplied 
 with organized religious work. “I have lived here 
 11 years,” writes one correspondent, “and I think 
 there have not been more than seven sermons 
 preached in this district in that time.” Others 
 report not having had services in 15 or 20 years. 
 “It is safe to say,” states the report for Colorado, 
 “making allowances for the fact that returns were 
 received from only 55 per cent, of the districts in the 
 state, that at least 25,000 or 30,000 people in 
 Colorado live more than four miles by a practicable 
 route of travel from the nearest church. Naturally 
 many of these people live in small communities scat- 
 tered over a large area, making church work, as it 
 is usually done, impracticable. However, that is 
 not true of all, as is indicated by the fact that one 
 district with a population of 716 reports ‘seven or 
 eight saloons, no church, one service per month;’ 
 and another, with a population of 460, reports that 
 ‘the saloon is doing all that is being done.’” 
 “Throughout Washington and Oregon,” writes 
 Dr. Ward Platt, of conditions prevailing seven years 
 ago, “may be found scores of narrow valleys teem- 
 
174 THE UNION OF CHBISTIAN FORCES 
 
 ing with people. No one is doing anything for them 
 religiously, as but little is attempted by any church 
 for Washington or Oregon outside the towns. In 
 southwestern Oregon is a county of about 1,500 
 square miles in which live at least 2,500 people, 
 mostly American; and no denomination, according 
 to the report made last year, is doing any work 
 whatever in that whole county. They are abso- 
 lutely without church privileges.”^ One in charge 
 of a large field in western Washington declares, 
 that “in his division only 209 towns out of 1,146 
 have church organizations, leaving 937 towns and 
 villages without any religious privileges whatever. 
 Over half the children in western Washington have 
 never been enrolled in a Sunday-school. The whole 
 region is in its infancy and is developing with 
 astounding rapidity.” “Where in this race,” asks 
 Dr. Platt, “is the Church of God?” 
 
 It ought to be said, however, that since these 
 statements were made by Dr. Platt, conditions 
 in this section of the country have, without doubt, 
 much improved as the field has been more fully 
 occupied by evangelizing agencies. During the four 
 years closing in 1914, the American Sunday-School 
 Union alone has increased the number of its mis- 
 sionaries in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to 11. 
 Through their efforts 400 new Sunday-schools were 
 
 * Ward Platt, The Frontier, p. 106. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 175 
 
 organized, with 1,400 teachers and almost 12,000 
 pupils; prayer-meetings and young people’s societies 
 were established in large numbers, and over 1,000 
 persons professed conversion. Out of the Sunday- 
 schools thus established, 14 churches of different 
 denominations were organized. That deplorable 
 need of further efforts still exists, however, in many 
 districts of the far West is indicated in the follow- 
 ing summary in the report of the Neglected Fields 
 Survey Committee to the Home Missions Council 
 at its meeting in 1914: ‘Tn Oregon 30.7 per cent, 
 of the districts sending in returns have churches and 
 Sunday-schools; in North Dakota, 27.7 per cent.; 
 in Colorado, 26.6 per cent.; in California (northern 
 portion), 28 per cent.; in Washington, 32.7 per 
 cent. While many districts reporting failed to 
 reply to the question as to whether there was im- 
 mediate religious activity, the percentages of those 
 definitely reporting no religious activity are: in 
 Washington, 40.1 per cent.; in California (northern 
 portion), 36.9 per cent.; in Colorado, 25.4 per cent.” 
 
 The final report of the committee which directed 
 these surveys, made to the Council at its meeting 
 in 1915, declared that, “in the 6,515 school districts 
 reported upon, the best state had 44 per cent, with- 
 out any kind of a church or Sunday-school, and the 
 worst 64 per cent.; and that each state showed from 
 25,000 to 47,000 people living more than four 
 
176 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 miles from any church.” “Perhaps more signifi- 
 cant,” the report continues, “is the fact that even 
 where churches of some kind are reported, it is 
 shown that they are not pouring through the com- 
 munity a continuous stream of life. Thirty-five 
 per cent, of them hold less than four services a 
 month. But even of those which have more or less 
 preaching, a large proportion are without continuous 
 ministry. From 31 to 51 per cent, have no resident 
 pastors.” 
 
 It was to study and to meet such conditions by 
 concerted action that the Home Missions Council 
 was organized. It is not the intention of the Coun- 
 cil to foster the organization of union or interde- 
 nominational churches, since, as it believes, the his- 
 tory of such organizations, deprived of denomina- 
 tional influence and control, is not encouraging. 
 Wherever churches should be combined, the Coun- 
 cil recommends that it be done by the method of 
 reciprocal exchange between denominations, ac- 
 cording to the method described in the preceding 
 chapter; with provision for receiving into associate 
 or full membership in such denominational organiza- 
 tions the members of any other communion as shall 
 make them truly community churches. Yet the 
 Council does not take upon itself the function of 
 interfering in the disposition of the affairs of indi- 
 vidual churches: it can do no more than make 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 177 
 
 recommendations, leaving local adjustments to be 
 administered by those upon the field. It is not the 
 purpose of the Council to decrease or hinder the 
 work of any denomination, but rather to stimulate 
 the activities of every Christian body, and to en- 
 courage particular denominations to enter specified 
 fields that are unoccupied or neglected. It advo- 
 cates no theoretical scheme of Christian unity, but 
 stands for the most practical forms of co-operative 
 effort that are immediately possible. It seeks, 
 moreover, to systematize and correlate those forms 
 of work in which the denominations are already 
 engaged in common, as, for example, educational 
 work for the Indians, and, where possible, to employ 
 a single agency for tasks better accomplished by 
 union effort, as is instanced in the appointment by 
 the Council of a traveling evangelist among the 
 Hindus in America. 
 
 In the effort to devise a plan for co-operative ac- 
 tion, in view of the facts revealed by the “Survey of 
 Neglected Fields,” a series of conferences was held 
 by the committee in six western states during 1914, 
 with results the importance of which for the future 
 of the home mission enterprise can hardly be over- 
 estimated. A federation for the more effective 
 conduct of home missions was instituted in every 
 state, or existing federations further developed. 
 The plan projected in Utah, which has already 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 been adopted by all of the state and national boards 
 and ecclesiastical bodies affected by it that have 
 thus far taken definite action upon it, and upon 
 whose favorable consideration its initiation de- 
 pends, is of the utmost significance as indicating the 
 trend of the new co-operative principle of our home 
 mission agencies. In outline,^ the plan calls for 
 the organization of a Utah Interdenominational 
 Commission, to be composed of two persons ap- 
 pointed by the state organization ofiicially repre- 
 senting each religious body co-operating, a secretary 
 of each supporting national board having ex officio 
 membership. To this Commission general policies 
 of co-operative work within the state are to be sub- 
 mitted for advisement, and by it sums to be used 
 in the co-operative work are to be determined, and 
 such other duties discharged as shall be jointly 
 assigned by the co-operating religious bodies. In 
 addition, a Utah Home Mission Workers’ Council 
 is contemplated, to be composed of four workers 
 chosen by each religious body co-operating, this 
 Council “to promote co-operative work in the field, 
 advise in the adjustment of differences, arrange for 
 the effective use of funds assigned to the co-operative 
 budget, and increase by all practicable means the 
 efficiency of the work of all the co-operating agen- 
 cies throughout the state.” It is proposed to 
 
 1 Report of Home Missions Council for 1915, p. 129. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 179 
 
 organize also an Annual Utah Workers’ Institute of 
 three or more days’ duration, to be of an educational 
 character, designed to inspire and train workers for 
 eflScient service, open to every ordained minister, 
 mission-school teacher, or other worker in the state, 
 with the necessary expense of attendance to be paid 
 in every case by such methods as each denomination 
 may adopt. It is provided in the plan that “action 
 of the Council affecting established home mission 
 policies, enlargement of co-operative budgets, or the 
 relations of denominations, shall be undertaken only 
 after the concurrence of the Commission.” Finally, 
 it is agreed that the plan “does not contemplate the 
 curtailing of denominational autonomy, nor encroach 
 upon the prerogative of the ecclesiastical bodies co- 
 operating, except as herein provided, or as each and 
 all may later agree.” 
 
 This plan, if successfully instituted, appears to be 
 adapted to bring the dream of a co-operative Chris- 
 tendom down from heaven to earth. Foreign j\Iis- 
 sion agencies, as we shall see in the following chap- 
 ter, possess the instrument through which their 
 efforts may be correlated and unified. The Home 
 Missions Council suffices to bring together the 
 leaders in home mission endeavor, and makes pos- 
 sible the formulation of broadly inclusive plans. 
 The great deficiency has been the lack of a plan by 
 which the co-operative spirit could be conveyed to 
 
180 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 the point of actual application to specific religious 
 tasks. The actual responsibility for the expensive 
 and wasteful competitive methods prevalent particu- 
 larly in rural communities rests, for the most part, 
 upon state denominational organizations, and these, 
 in most instances, are carrying on their work without 
 systematic co-operation in the occupation of fields, 
 or even conference with one another. In a few 
 states, as in Maine, state federations of churches 
 concern themselves with particular problems of 
 comity and co-operation, but such federations, in 
 general, are so loosely organized that they are in 
 constant danger of degenerating into select coteries 
 for the ineffective if innocuous discussion of doc- 
 trinal agreements and differences. There is impera- 
 tive need either that larger discretionary and execu- 
 tive powers shall be delegated to such federations for 
 the settlement of particular questions of comity and 
 co-operation as they arise, or that, by some sueh 
 plan as that of Utah, those responsible for the direc- 
 tion of denominational efforts within the state shall 
 regularly meet for the discussion and mutual adjust- 
 ment of the projects and methods of their de- 
 nominations, and for the correlation of the forces 
 which they control. 
 
 Thus the Home Missions Council is breaking out 
 new paths in the field of interdenominational co- 
 operation. It is making it possible for the de- 
 
CO-OPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS 
 
 181 
 
 nominations included within it thoroughly to study 
 the facts that enter into the home mission problem 
 as no single denomination is able to study them, and 
 then to plan a united campaign to disseminate 
 knowledge of the facts and to meet the needs that are 
 disclosed. It involves no slackening of the bonds 
 of denominational loyalty or loss in the force of de- 
 nominational conviction. But it is based on the 
 assumption that the character of the differences that 
 separate the affiliated denominations is not such as 
 to prevent co-operation in the tremendous task of 
 the evangelization of the continent, and that it is 
 not essential to the spiritual welfare of America that 
 the entire population should become Methodist or 
 Presbyterian, or members of any particular denomi- 
 nation, so long as all are Christian, and the springs 
 of national and personal life are purified and sweet- 
 ened. It is a long step forward that the churches 
 are definitely agreed that God does not plan to save 
 America by means of any one denomination, and 
 that a broader avenue has been discovered along 
 which the forces of Protestant Christianity may 
 march together. 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN 
 MISSION FIELD 
 
Extent and difficulties of the foreign missionary effort. — 
 Heathen themselves impressed with conflicting Christian 
 teachings. — Oriental Christians not interested in causes and 
 conditions that gave birth to the various denominations. — 
 A new spirit of co-operation: its nature and possibilities. — 
 Development of Christian unity on mission fields as indicated 
 in reports of Continuation Committee Conferences in India, 
 China, Korea, and Japan. — Attitude of the churches in the 
 East toward denominational supervision. — Work of co-op- 
 eration in the fields of Christian education and medicine. — 
 Co-operation between foreign missionary organizations in 
 America. — ^Unity among churches of the East greatest in- 
 fluence for co-operation at home. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CO-OPEKATION ON THE FOREIGN MIS.SION FIELD 
 
 It is against the dark background of the needs 
 of heathenism that the real significance and the 
 cost of the divided state of Christendom are most 
 clearly revealed. The churches of Christ are 
 definitely committed to the task of evangelizing 
 1,000,000,000 souls, massed in great centers of 
 population, or widely scattered over vast tracts of 
 territory, and spread over every zone from the icy 
 coasts of the Esquimos to the tropic jungles of 
 Africa and the frozen islands of the southernmost 
 seas. The gospel of Christ must be interpreted 
 into each language and racial temperament until 
 every man upon the earth may hear the truth in the 
 tongue to which he was born. The missionary must 
 penetrate into tropical regions where existence is 
 almost impossible for men reared in the temperate 
 zone, prejudiees must be removed, institutions must 
 be organized, a new spiritual atmosphere must be 
 created, and the great streams of racial development 
 must be turned into new channels. 
 
 It is a titanic enterprise, the most stupendous 
 undertaking that has ever appealed to the soul of 
 
 185 
 
186 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 man. Obviously it will tax the resources of the 
 entire Church to the utmost. If all Christians every- 
 where should join in cordial co-operation, marching 
 together as one great army in a single campaign, so 
 distributing their forces as to economize time, and 
 effort, and money, minimize prejudice and opposi- 
 tion, and utilize, to the highest degree of eflficiency, 
 all the armament of Christendom, marshaling the 
 combined resources of the Church with a superlative 
 strategy, and meeting the solid front of heathenism 
 with a united and unshaken vigor of attack, the 
 most hopeful might even then despair at times and 
 the stoutest hearts lose courage. Yet, among the 
 obstacles that oppose the progress of the gospel of 
 Christ among heathen peoples, one of the greatest 
 is the lack of union among the forces that are en- 
 gaged in the propaganda. 
 
 Not only must the missionaries meet the natural 
 and inevitable prejudice that confronts a new and 
 strange philosophy, and all the inertia of spiritual 
 lethargy, but they must labor against the misunder- 
 standings and confusion that they are themselves 
 forced to introduce through the presentation of 
 various and conflicting t^'pes of the religion which 
 they seek to inculcate. It is not uncommon to-day 
 for missionaries to be bidden by heathen folk first 
 to reconcile their own differences before seeking to 
 win converts to their faith, — a sitviation sure to be 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 187 
 
 more often met as, with the wider spread of Chris- 
 tianity, heathen opposition grows stronger and 
 more intelligent. “Which is the bigger God,” 
 asked a chief in Africa, “the Presbjderian God, or 
 the Baptist God, or the Methodist God?” “What 
 is the answer,” asks a friend of the missionary en- 
 terprise, “to the Japanese nobleman crossing the 
 public square of Tokio, who, urged to become a 
 Christian, sweeps his hand about the square where 
 a score or more missionary agencies have their 
 homes, and asks, ‘Which Christianity?’ ” Is it any 
 wonder that the heathen peoples stand dismayed 
 upon the threshold of the temple of the new religion 
 that claims the right to displace their ancestral 
 faiths, at the multiplicity of varieties and the differ- 
 ences and divisions among those who already worship 
 at its altars, and the diverse and often discordant 
 voices that appeal from its pulpits? To which of 
 these is their allegiance to be given, and whom must 
 they believe? “The world will never be converted 
 by a disunited church.”^ At a conference of Chris- 
 tian workers recently held in China, a Chinese leader 
 said, “In our town are four different translations 
 of the Bible, and they cause great trouble by reason 
 of their differences.” A physician rose and re- 
 marked, “I have just come from the sick-bed of a 
 man who had had eleven native physicians who had 
 
 ■ William Milligan, The Resurrection oj Our Lord, p. 202. 
 
188 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 each left a different prescription. The patient had 
 not taken any one of them. I am for Christian 
 unity.” 
 
 It is inevitable that the causes responsible for the 
 division of the Church into various bodies in Chris- 
 tian lands should fail to impress the minds of those 
 of other races of so different a spiritual heritage and 
 history. It is impossible that these should enter 
 sympathetically into the struggles and sacrifices and 
 toils which have been the price of spiritual freedom. 
 They discern only the differences that have resulted, 
 devoid of the glow and warmth borrowed from the 
 circumstances of their origin and history, and the 
 contemplation of them leaves the converts from 
 heathenism unmoved and cold. No enthusiasm of 
 loyalty unites the heart of the Chinaman to a de- 
 nominational banner inscribed with the name of a 
 geographical division of a territory remote from his 
 own, and which has no meaning whatsoever when 
 transported across the sea. It excites no pride in 
 his heart to be a member of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church South, especially if the Chinese members 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church North are 
 situated to the south of him. Bishop Thoburn 
 has expressed the amusement, mingled with sad- 
 ness, with which he heard an almost naked 
 Hindu Christian assert that he was a “Scotch 
 Presbyterian!” 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 189 
 
 The rising spirit of nationalism in every Asiatic 
 land finds no satisfaction in such artificial distinc- 
 tions imported from abroad. It is as unjust as it is 
 unwise to seek to impose upon these Eastern peoples 
 distinctions and divisions which, however much they 
 may mean to those among whom they originated, 
 can never mean anything to them but the shibbo- 
 leths of a strife in which they have had no share and 
 can have no interest. The churches beyond the seas 
 have not been w'on by the proclamation of our 
 points of difference, but by the gospel that we hold 
 in common. The native Christians of China who 
 laid down their lives by the thousand in the dreadful 
 days of the Boxer riots would not have died for a 
 form of baptism, nor for a scheme of church polity, 
 nor for a liturgy, nor for a theory of the validity of 
 ecclesiastical orders; but they refused to trample 
 upon the figure of a rude cross traced on the ground, 
 though their lives were required as the alternative 
 offered in exchange, lest they dishonor the Lord of 
 Christendom! For the Christ of the Cross multi- 
 tudes even dared to die! It is always the Saviour 
 that attracts and unites, and human interpretations 
 and obscurations of him that repel and divide. The 
 only bond that holds the Oriental to the particular 
 denomination in which he is enrolled is the fact that 
 this denomination, rather than another, brought him 
 to Christ. 
 
190 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 As a matter of fact, the names of many of the de- 
 nominations do not find corresponding terms in the 
 languages of some of the lands to which they are 
 carried into which they can be translated, and have 
 to be taken over bodily by transliteration, and the 
 distinctions which they convey are in many cases so 
 foreign to the habits of thought of such peoples that 
 they never grasp their true significance. The real 
 evils from which the nations suffer are impurity, 
 social inequality, and despair. The African and the 
 Korean feel their need of the Christ as soon as they 
 understand him, for only Christ can reveal the char- 
 acter of God and thus rebuke impurity; only Christ 
 can teach the brotherhood of man and so redeem the 
 outcast; and only Christ can lift the veil from the 
 future and exchange hope for hopelessness. But 
 they do not feel the need, nor discern the force of 
 the fine distinctions of doctrines for which de- 
 nominationalism stands. Why should the con- 
 science of the new-born convert be burdened with a 
 mass of Aberglaube which can neither save nor 
 condemn? 
 
 Further, if it were not for the pressure exerted 
 from the home lands, the native Christians among 
 these far-away peoples would speedily unite. ‘We 
 should have one united Chinese Church in China,” 
 said a native leader there, “but the Mandarins in 
 America will not permit it.” Dr. A. J. Brown refers 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 191 
 
 to “the grim remark of an East Indian pastor that, 
 ‘were it not for the vigilance of the Western shep- 
 herds, the Indian sheep would some fine morning 
 be all found in one fold.’ ” A Chinese clergyman, 
 the same author reports, in a union meeting of the 
 churches about Nanking, arose and said, as he 
 pointed in turn to several missionaries, “You are an 
 American Presbyterian; and you can’t help it, for 
 you were brought up that way. You are a Cana- 
 dian Methodist; and you can’t help it, for you were 
 brought up that way. You are an English Church- 
 man; and you can’t help it either, for you were 
 brought up that way. But we are Chinese Chris- 
 tians, and we do not propose to permit you men from 
 abroad to keep us apart.’’ The new nationalism 
 which is w'orking like yeast in China and India to 
 unify and energize these peoples, and which has al- 
 ready done its work in Japan, is impatient with a 
 foreign church imposed upon it from without. 
 Where native churches have been well established, 
 the missionaries soon find that they must learn to 
 be content to be simply the advisers and guides of a 
 Christian community determined to develop along 
 lines characteristic of its own civilization, and in 
 forms indigenous to it. And that such is the case 
 every true missionary rejoices, for the hope of 
 heathenism lies in the development of a truly native 
 church, with an energy and an enthusiasm derived 
 
192 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 immediately from the one Lord of the Church. The 
 anxiety of the missionary is only lest the churches of 
 Asia should demand their freedom before they have 
 developed a native leadership fitted to guide it. 
 
 “If we want to win the heathen world to Christ,” 
 said Phillips Brooks, after his missionary tour 
 around the world, “we must not go to them as 
 Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, or Bap- 
 tists: we must go to them simply as Christians.” 
 Dr. John R. Mott said to the great Edinburgh 
 Missionary Conference that the union of the 
 Church would mean more than the doubling of the 
 missionary force. The difiiculties in the way of the 
 unification of the forces upon missionary fields are 
 great; but if the foregoing statement is true, every 
 possible effort should be made to surmount them. 
 
 The denominations which have been instrumental 
 in founding mission churches are not to blame for the 
 introduction of their distinctive and divisive prin- 
 ciples into missionary lands. Such was the inevit- 
 able consequence of the denominational system. 
 Any other course would have been Impossible a 
 century ago. The noble ideal of the London Mis- 
 sionary Society, founded in 1795, and composed of 
 Presbyterians, Independents, and members of the 
 Church of England, failed because it was too far 
 in advance of its times. It declared its design to be 
 “not to send Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, or 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 193 
 
 any form of church government (about which there 
 may be differences of opinion among serious persons), 
 but the glorious gospel of the blessed God to the 
 heathen, and that it shall be left (as it ought to be 
 left) to the minds of the persons whom God may call 
 to the fellowship of his Son from among them, to 
 assume for themselves such form of church govern- 
 ment as to them shall appear most agreeable to the 
 word of God.” Later, however, as the missionary 
 enterprise grew in extent, the Episcopalians and the 
 Presbyterians withdrew to form missionary organi- 
 zations of their own. Nevertheless this broad con- 
 ception may prove to have been prophetic of the 
 missionary method yet to be, though in that age 
 it was impossible. 
 
 When we survey the missionary field to-day, it is 
 evident that a new spirit of co-operation is flowing 
 in everywhere like a flood. And something of what 
 the character of that co-operation is to be when it 
 is consummated is also becoming evident. It can- 
 not come through compromise : it must come 
 through comprehension. The distinctive convic- 
 tions for which the various denominations stand can- 
 not be cast aside like an outworn cloak without 
 strain to conscience and consequent loss of spiritual 
 power. But together with fidelity to distinctive 
 principles there may and must be a new emphasis 
 upon the things held in common as the essential 
 13 
 
194 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 and permanent message of the Church. It is not 
 essential that churches should be organized upon 
 the basis of their peculiarities. It is possible to 
 create a more inclusive fellowship to which each 
 company of believers shall bring its particular inter- 
 pretation of the Christ and add it to the common 
 store. “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, 
 and in all things charity” is the motto for a united 
 Church at home and abroad. Toward such an 
 ideal the forces upon the foreign field, impelled by 
 an appalling need and by the genius of the peoples 
 among whom they labor, are earnestly striving. 
 A missionary leader, recently returned from a tour 
 in China and Japan, reports that he met in con- 
 ference five Christian professors in the Doshisha 
 University who united in the expression of belief 
 that, while the essence of Christianity is bound to 
 prevail in Japan, Western ecclesiastical forms and 
 institutions will not prevail there. 
 
 Meanwhile, as we wait for the realization of an 
 ideal unity, there must be a larger measure of co- 
 operation in the survey of unoccupied fields, a more 
 strict division of territory among the missionary 
 agencies, a freer exchange of members between all 
 types of churches, and a closer affiliation of all forms 
 of service where co-operation or union is already 
 possible. In mission lands, as at home, federation 
 will precede organic unity. There is not a Baptist 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 195 
 
 and a Presbyterian materia medica, nor has any 
 single denomination a monopoly of the multiplica- 
 tion table. Hospitals and medical schools are com- 
 ing together everywhere, and in primary and second- 
 ary schools, wherever these can be administered 
 more economically by uniting with other schools of 
 a similar character of another denomination, con- 
 solidation is being promoted. In the higher schools 
 and colleges, and even in theological seminaries, the 
 same tendency is evident. The work of publication, 
 in many centers, is accomplished for several denom- 
 inations through a single agency. Thus is the way 
 being cleared for the closer spiritual unity that shall 
 clearly fulfil the prayer of our Lord. 
 
 The reports of the Continuation Committee Con- 
 ferences in Asia, held in India, China, Korea, and 
 Japan, under the direction of Dr. John R. Mott dur- 
 ing 1912-1913, indicate the notable progress of 
 recent years both in the growth of the spirit of 
 Christian unity and in its practical exemplification 
 upon the missionary field. In the oflicial reports of 
 each of the local conferences held at Madras, Bom- 
 bay, Jubbulpore, Allahabad, and Calcutta, reference 
 is made to the wide-spread desire on the part of the 
 native Christians of India, especially among the 
 better educated, “for the development of one united 
 Indian Church.” At the India National Confer- 
 ence in Calcutta the following minute was adopted: 
 
196 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 “This Conference is of the opinion that there is un- 
 doubtedly a strong desire on the part of many of 
 the leaders of the Indian Christian community for a 
 comprehensive church organization adapted to the 
 country. While the community as a whole, as 
 might be expected from its origin and history, can- 
 not be said to have shown any strong and wide- 
 spread desire in this direction, neither can it be said 
 that there is anything within the community itself 
 which would militate against the realization of such 
 an ideal. This Conference, therefore, considers that 
 every facility should be afforded for the spread and 
 development of this desire in the Indian community 
 at large. While this Conference believes that the 
 Indian Church should continue to receive and ab- 
 sorb every good influence which the Church of the 
 West may impart to it, it also believes that in respect 
 of forms and organization the Indian Church should 
 have entire freedom to develop on such lines as will 
 conduce to the most natural expression of the spirit- 
 ual instincts of Indian Christians.” 
 
 At each of the local conferences in India steps were 
 taken for the organization of provincial Federal 
 Councils, and at the National Conference it was 
 recommended that there be formed a National Mis- 
 sionary Council of India, the objects of which were 
 declared to be: (a) To co-operate with the pro- 
 vincial Councils in the carrying out of their objects; 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 197 
 
 (b) to be in communication wnth the Continuation 
 Committee of the Edinburgh Missionary Confer- 
 ence regarding such matters as require considera- 
 tion or action from the point of view of the Indian 
 mission field as a whole; (c) to take into considera- 
 tion such other questions affecting the entire mis- 
 sionary field as may seem to it desirable; (d) to 
 make provision for the convening of an All-India 
 Missionary Conference when such, in the opinion 
 of the Council, is desirable. 
 
 Everywhere in India there is manifest a desire for 
 the more active promotion of comity and co-opera- 
 tion through a more strict delimitation of territory, 
 in the transfer of mission workers, and in the treat- 
 ment of persons under discipline; and by the National 
 Conference it was declared to be desirable “that spir- 
 itual hospitality be offered to persons of whatever 
 denomination who may find themselves in an area 
 in which the ministrations of their own communion 
 are not procurable.” Co-operation in all forms of 
 education was advocated in every Conference, and 
 all Christians everywhere are urged, in the words of 
 the National Conference, “to be instant in believing 
 prayer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ that he will vouchsafe speedily to accom- 
 plish his gracious purpose and hasten the day when 
 the prayer of our Redeemer may be fulfilled, and all 
 his people be perfected into one.” 
 
198 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 The reports of the Conferences in China tell a 
 similar story. “We recognize,” declares the Canton 
 Conference, “that the Chinese Church, both as 
 regards her leaders and the majority of her mem- 
 bership, is strongly in favor of one Church, open 
 to all Christians, and is making a more or less con- 
 scious effort to realize that aim. This does not mean 
 that there will be a uniform statement of faith, or 
 identity in forms of worship, or one central govern- 
 ment, but that there will be an attempt to make this 
 a truly Christian Church, which in all its constit- 
 uent parts will comprehend the whole Christian 
 life of the nation. . . . Our faith is in the guiding 
 of the Holy Spirit, who will safeguard the essential 
 liberty of the constituent parts of the Church. He, 
 too, will enable us to share as a common possession 
 the benefits of those varied attainments in truth, 
 faith, and practice which each denomination holds as 
 a sacred trust received by the grace of our one Lord. 
 While, however, the Chinese Church should con- 
 tinue to receive and absorb every good influence 
 which the Church of the West can impart, it should, 
 in respect of forms and organization, have entire 
 freedom to develop in accord with the most natural 
 expression and largest cultivation of the spiritual 
 instincts of Chinese Christians.” The Shanghai 
 Conference declared : ‘We can set before the Church 
 in China no lower ideal than that of a manifest and 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 199 
 
 organic unity. It should include all those within 
 the Chinese nation who hold the truth of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. But this unity must be a result of 
 spiritual growth rather than of outward organiza- 
 tion. Organization should be expressive of the 
 growth in unity of life.” 
 
 There seems to have been general agreement in all 
 the Conferences that the first step toward the organic 
 unity desired is the federation of existing churches 
 for mutual counsel and co-operation. “The differ- 
 ences which now characterize us,” said the Shanghai 
 Conference, “are not the results of wilful disobe- 
 dience, and will doubtless disappear as we, by united 
 counsel and work, understand each other better and 
 attain to a fuller conformity to the mind of Christ. 
 We believe that the way to unity will open as we 
 patiently study the Scriptures, the past history of the 
 Church, and the living experiences of the various 
 present sections of the Church.” The Conferences at 
 Tsinan-fu, Peking, and Hankow expressed their con- 
 victions in practically identical terms. A National 
 Conference on Faith and Order, a central Business 
 Agency for all China, Boards of Arbitration for all 
 China, fuller co-operation in all educational enter- 
 prises are among the plans suggested for the cor- 
 relation of all the forces in China engaged in mis- 
 sionary work, while from every one goes forth an 
 earnest call for united intercession that the prayer 
 
200 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of the Lord for the unity of his Church may be ful- 
 filled. 
 
 Finally, the purpose of the Christians in China 
 is summed up in the findings of the China National 
 Conference at Shanghai in words whose significance 
 can hardly be overestimated: “In order to do all 
 that is possible to manifest the unity which already 
 exists among all faithful Christians in China, and to 
 present ourselves in the face of the great mass of 
 Chinese non-Christian people as one brotherhood 
 with one common name, this Conference suggests 
 as the most suitable name for this purpose. . . . 
 ‘The Christian Church in China.’ ” The Conference 
 proceeds to recommend as steps toward a larger 
 unity, the uniting of churches of similar ecclesiastical 
 order; the organic union of churches which already 
 enjoy intercommunion; federation, local and pro- 
 vincial, of all churches willing to co-operate in the 
 extension of the kingdom of God; the formation of 
 a National Council of the Churches; the fresh study 
 by all Christians of the faith and order of those who 
 differ from them, and intercession for the increase 
 of the spirit of unity. 
 
 The Seoul Conference, conducted by the continua- 
 tion Committee, recounts with gratitude the progress 
 that has been made during the last decade in unify- 
 ing and federating the work of the missions and 
 churches in Korea: “The union hjTun-book; a 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 201 
 
 common name as applicable to most of the churches; 
 the formation of a Federal Council of Evangelical 
 Missions, and of an Educational Federation; union 
 in the Severance Hospital Medical School, and in 
 other educational institutions; co-operation in the 
 Tract Society, the Bible Committee, and in other 
 forms of work; the division of territory arranged 
 among six of the principal missions and correspond- 
 ing churches; the union of the work of four Presby- 
 terian Missions into one Presbji;erian Church; and 
 the federation of the two Methodist missions, show 
 that much has been accomplished.” The belief is 
 expressed that “all look forward to a closer degree 
 of formal organization, whatever be the means 
 through which the Spirit of God may lead.” 
 
 Japan is not so far advanced in the direction of 
 organic unity as are China and Korea; nor is the 
 desire for a national church that shall include Chris- 
 tians of every name as evident as in India. “The 
 tendency of Christianity in Japan at present,” de- 
 clared the Japan National Conference, “is toward the 
 maintenance of separate churches, in their organiza- 
 tion patterned after those in the West; but for the 
 purpose of co-operation in v;ork of common interest 
 an organization has been formed which is known as 
 the Federation of Churches in Japan. The Federa- 
 tion is composed of churches comprising four-fifths 
 of the Protestant Christians in Japan, and there are 
 
202 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 indications that the churches comprising the remain- 
 ing one-fifth may enter the organization in the near 
 future.” “It is the sincere hope and earnest prayer 
 of every Christian man and woman,” it was stated 
 by the Tokio Conference, “that all the churches rep- 
 resenting Christianity in Japan may come together 
 and be made one in Christ, with one faith, one order, 
 and one work; but we think it will be some time be- 
 fore this high ideal can be realized.” 
 
 It is in part, perhaps, because in China such great 
 distances separate the mission stations from one 
 another, that federation there has been upon inter- 
 denominational rather than upon denominational 
 lines, whereas in Japan the reverse has been the case; 
 but it is evident that the sense of national unity that 
 is spreading so widely, and impressing itself so 
 deeply among all the peoples of the East, is making 
 more definitely year by year, even in Japan, for a 
 national Church that shall clearly set forth to the 
 world the essential unity of all believers in Christ. 
 That the problem of Christian unity is not so burn- 
 ing a question, as yet, in Africa arises from the lack of 
 a common consciousness, such as is found in the 
 East, among the scattered tribes of that great con- 
 tinent. 
 
 Already upon the mission fields, in individual in- 
 stances, further advance toward the ideal of a united 
 Church has been made than can be found anywhere 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 203 
 
 among Western nations. The West China Missions 
 Advisory Board, which publishes two monthlies, one 
 in English and one in Chinese, has achieved actual 
 union in certain educational enterprises, notably in 
 a most successful union Middle School in Cheng-tu; 
 and is definitely working toward the ideal of one 
 Protestant Christian Church in West China, with a 
 single declaration of faith as a common basis for 
 church membership. Federation Councils are al- 
 ready organized and at work in at least 12 of the 18 
 provinces of China. In the Philippine Islands the 
 Evangelical Union, organized in 1901 for the purpose 
 of securing comity and efficiency, has abundantly 
 justified its existence, and the territory has been 
 divided among the various societies working there, 
 who are laboring together harmoniously toward a 
 closer and more effective affiliation.^ A large pro- 
 portion of the missionary field has been now divided 
 by agreement between the missionary agencies into 
 similar spheres of influence and responsibility. 
 
 The remarkable intellectual awakening which the 
 Orient is experiencing has emphasized the necessity 
 for schools and colleges larger in number and in 
 capacity, and of a higher grade than individual 
 communions are able to furnish. Both economy and 
 efficiency are demanding that denominational agen- 
 
 1 For further examples see the Report of the Committee on Foreign 
 Missions of the Federal Council, December, 1912, and Dr. A. J. Brown. 
 Unity and Missions^ Chapters X. and XI. 
 
204 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 cies shall unite in the establishment and support of 
 secondary schools in the larger centers; and if the 
 Christian college and university are not to relin- 
 quish the primacy which they have enjoyed hither- 
 to, and to be surpassed in scholarship and equip- 
 ment by the non-Christian institutions that are 
 rising on every hand, denominations must combine 
 their educational resources. In Peking the Method- 
 ist, Presbyterian, and English and American Con- 
 gregational Boards are uniting in the development 
 of a single university scheme with one union insti- 
 tution of each academic type.^ With a similar 
 statesmanship union universities are being devel- 
 oped in Tsinan-fu, Nanking, and Cheng-tu in China, 
 and in strategic centers in other Asiatic lands. In 
 China alone there are already about 30 educational 
 institutions under interdenominational control. 
 
 More difficult are the problems attending theo- 
 logical education. In the home land theological 
 seminaries of an interdenominational character are, 
 for obvious reasons, exceedingly rare. On the 
 foreign field, however, co-operation in even this form 
 of education is being found practicable. Dr. A. J. 
 Browm reports that “there are interdenominational 
 theological seminaries or training-schools for Chris- 
 tian workers in Manila (Methodist and Presbyte- 
 rian), Seoul (Northern and Southern Methodist; 
 
 ■ Dr. A. J. Brown, Unity and Missions, p. 159. 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 205 
 
 Northern, Southern, Australian, and Canadian 
 Presbyterian), Peking (English and American Con- 
 gregational, and American Presbyterian), Nanking 
 (Northern and Southern Methodist, Northern and 
 Southern Presbyterian, and Disciples), Shan-tung 
 (English Baptist, and American Presbjderian), 
 Bangalore (United Free Church of Scotland, Re- 
 formed Presbyterian Church of America, London 
 Missionary Society, American Board, and Wesleyan 
 Missionary Society), and Canton (English and 
 American Congregationalists; American, Canadian, 
 and New Zealand Presbj^derians; English Wesley- 
 ans, and United Brethren). In Australia, the 
 Moravians and the Presbyterians have agreed on a 
 plan by which the former train missionaries for the 
 mission to the aborigines of North Queensland, and 
 the latter control and support them.” ‘‘The ex- 
 periment of union theological instruction,” declares 
 Dr. Brown, “begun about a dozen years ago, not 
 without misgivings, has proved to be a signal suc- 
 cess, and no difficulties whatever have emerged that 
 are worth mentioning in comparison with the bene- 
 fits that have accrued. Foreign missionaries have 
 demonstrated that union in theological instruction 
 is entirely practicable.”^ 
 
 In the field of medical education, co-operation be- 
 tween denominations is more easily secured. There 
 
206 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 are no diseases, not even spiritual diseases, peculiar 
 to particular denominations. Sanitation and hy- 
 giene are the handmaids of the most diverse theol- 
 ogies, and in the sick-room or by the bedside of the 
 dying, “distinctive principles” are out of place. In 
 China, in particular, union medical schools and hos- 
 pitals are multiplying. The largest and most widely 
 known of these is the Union Medical College in 
 Peking, in which the London Missionary Society, 
 the American Presbyterian Mission, the American 
 Board, Peking University (Methodist), the Lon- 
 don Medical Missionary Association, and the 
 Church of England Mission co-operate. At Han- 
 kow, Nanking, Canton, and Shan-tung similar insti- 
 tutions are either established or in process of organi- 
 zation.' In the Philippine Islands Baptists and 
 Presbyterians are uniting in the management of the 
 best hospital in the territory. 
 
 It is possible that this is to be the crowning con- 
 tribution of Eastern Christianity to the West, — the 
 rich return of the Orient for the labors and treasures 
 expended by the churches of the Occident upon the 
 other side of the globe, — an example of Christian 
 unity such as shall provide the strongest stimulus 
 ever given to the unification of Christian forces at 
 home. Already the necessities of the foreign mis- 
 
 ' Dr. J. B. Neal, “Union Medical Colleges in China,” in The Christian 
 Work, May 22, 1915, p. 665. 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 207 
 
 sionary enterprise and the spirit of unity upon mis- 
 sion fields have drawn the agencies of the churches 
 at home into close co-operation. The greatest 
 obstacle to unity on the foreign field has always 
 been disunity among the churches at the home base. 
 The China National Conference, to which reference 
 has been made, adopted a resolution which the 
 churches of America would do well to heed: “Inas- 
 much as co-operation between the missionary bodies 
 working on the field is rendered almost impossible 
 without the sanction of the Home Boards, this Con- 
 ference recommends that the China Continuation 
 Committee endeavor to bring about a greater meas- 
 ure of co-operation between the Mission Boards at 
 home.” Thus do the children admonish their 
 parents! 
 
 A large measure of unity among the agencies of 
 the denominations at home has, however, already 
 been secured. For 20 years the representatives of 
 all foreign missionary organizations in America have 
 met in annual conference to consider such questions 
 as comity, co-operation, the forces needed for the 
 evangelization of the world, the division of territory, 
 the place of the native Church, the relations of mis- 
 sionaries to the native populations, and, indeed, all 
 questions of a common interest. Similar confer- 
 ences have lately been organized in Great Britain 
 and Ireland and in Germany. The Laymen’s 
 
208 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Missionary Movement, the Missionary Education 
 Movement, and the Missionary Volunteer Move- 
 ment are all of them organizations of an interde- 
 nominational character whose object it is, not to send 
 out missionaries, but to foster missionary interest 
 and to spread missionary information throughout 
 all denominations. 
 
 There is no service in which Christians can engage 
 that can draw them together in a fellowship so strong 
 as does the missionary cause. Here men meet on a 
 level higher than their denominational divisions and 
 find themselves at one. Upon the platform of the 
 evangelization of the world all Christians can stand 
 together, and there they feel most keenly the bonds 
 that unite them. The Laymen’s Missionary Move- 
 ment in America has brought the men of the churches 
 together as no organization with a smaller or less 
 inspiring purpose could possibly have done. The 
 great Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 
 1910, the seventh of a series of such conferences, 
 interdenominational and international, that date 
 back to 1854, might well be called “Ecumenical,” 
 for it was the nearest approach to an all-inclusive 
 gathering that Protestantism has ever seen. No 
 other cause could have called together so repre- 
 sentative a body. And the Continuation Com- 
 mittee, appointed by the Conference to carry out 
 the lines of work projected by it, is perhaps the 
 
CO-OPERATION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD 209 
 
 mightiest single influence in the world to-day mak- 
 ing for co-operation and unity among the forces of 
 Christendom. For 13 years the Missionary Educa- 
 tion Movement, controlled by a board chosen by 
 American home and foreign missionary societies in 
 co-operation, has been providing text-books for mis- 
 sion study classes and other literature of a high 
 order for the use of all denominations in common, 
 and hundreds of thousands have gained a new 
 knowledge of the missionary enterprise through its 
 activities. The necessities of the missionary cause 
 furnish the mightiest argument for Christian co- 
 operation and unity that the Church has ever faced. 
 
 Thus still another illustration is furnished of the 
 truth, that it is in service performed together, and 
 not in the discussion of their points of difference, 
 that Christians of every name and type are discover- 
 ing how wide and deep is the measure of unity that 
 already exists among them, and how far-reaching are 
 the possibilities of a union still more real and strong. 
 “There has never been a time,” truly says the Com- 
 mittee on Foreign Missions of the Federal Council, 
 “since the German Reformation, when various de- 
 nominations were so closely engaged in co-operative 
 measures for promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ 
 among the nations. There has never been a period 
 since the beginning of modern missions when de- 
 nominational differences were so minimized and the 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 great fundamental truths of our blessed religion were 
 so universally emphasized, and we advance together 
 for the conquest of the world for Christ. More and 
 more the united front of Christianity is presented 
 to the united opposition of Islam and paganism, and 
 only when this union is practically complete may one 
 expect to achieve the victory sought.”^ 
 
 1 Report of the Committee on Foreign Missions at the Second Quadrennial 
 Council, December, 1912. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
Mere federation not sufficient. — Organic unity traced 
 through entire history of the Church. — Conditions to-day 
 more conducive than ever to organic unity. — Experiments 
 in actual Church union cited. — Proposed World Conference: 
 Its origin and purpose; Relation of the Roman Catholic and 
 Greek Orthodox Churches to the movement. — Ultimate 
 union of all Christian forces must be preceded by unification 
 of denominational divisions; Results already accomplished. 
 — Union of certain denominations being attempted in many 
 parts of the world. — Various denominational branches in 
 America tending toward a new type of polity and worship. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 Valuable as has been the service rendered by the 
 federation of the churches to the cause of the King- 
 dom, the conviction is steadily growing that some- 
 thing more is necessary if the prayer of the Lord for 
 the unity of his disciples is to be fulfilled. 
 
 There are many Christian men, without a doubt, 
 who have no desire for any degree of unity closer 
 than federation can supply. They think habitually 
 in terms of churches, never in terms of the Church. 
 They have no expectation nor hope that the eccle- 
 siastical fragments with which Christendom is 
 strewn will ever be gathered into a single basket. 
 The ideal of a catholicity one day to be visible 
 seems to such neither possible nor desirable. To 
 them denominationalism is not a temporary ex- 
 pedient, nor a recourse made necessary by the mis- 
 fortunes of Christian history, but the expression of 
 the Christian ideal; and such a federation of de- 
 nominations as is exemplified in the Federal Council 
 of Churches of Christ in America is to them the last 
 word upon the subject of Christian unity. “There 
 never will be a time,” writes President Strong of the 
 
 213 
 
214 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 University of Kansas, “when the Christian body 
 will not be organized in different groups.” “To let 
 denominations decay,” says Dr. Shailer Mathews, 
 now President of the Federal Council, “would be to 
 let churches decay. What we are getting now is a 
 co-operative Protestantism. ... I am not writing 
 in a spirit of sectarianism, but as one who recog- 
 nizes that the denominations are economically 
 necessary to the development of a really effective 
 Protestantism.” 
 
 There are, however, many signs that the Christian 
 consciousness of our day cannot be so easily satis- 
 fied. The process of federation has already gone too 
 far if the churches are not to go farther. There will 
 be an inconsistency in many of the activities in 
 which the spirit of unity is expressing itself, as long 
 as the imperialistic claims of the individual de- 
 nominations to the exclusive possession of essential 
 truth are unabated. The policy of interdenomina- 
 tional comity, reciprocal denominational exchanges 
 of churches in over-churched communities, and the 
 division of unoccupied territory, both at home and on 
 the foreign mission field, into districts wherein par- 
 ticular denominations are invited to labor with the 
 assurance of non-interference on the part of others, 
 seems to be definitely accepted and established. 
 But note what this involves. If the differences be- 
 tween evangelical denominations are sufficient to 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 215 
 
 make organic unity impossible without the sur- 
 render of essential truth, then they are sufficient to 
 make both inconsistent and wrong the concessions 
 that are necessary for such division of responsibility 
 for the vital activities of evangelism and religious 
 education. No denomination which sincerely be- 
 lieves another to be so lacking in knowledge of the 
 truth as to make organic unity with it impossible 
 has a right deliberately to commit, either in prac- 
 tice or in theory, the souls of any portion of the 
 world to the exclusive ministrations of that de- 
 nomination. To do so evidently concedes that it is 
 what the churches hold in common that saves, and 
 not the distinctive principles of any one of them, and 
 so cuts the ground beneath denominational divisions. 
 The federated churches must either go forward to- 
 ward organic unity, or they must retrace the steps 
 already taken. Dr. Newman SmjTh very truly 
 says, “Federations of churches are to be regarded 
 as at best only way-stations in the progress of the 
 Church; the line of development of true Catholicity 
 runs on and on, and our denominations are called to 
 be through passengers. They shall not otherwise 
 finish their course in faith. 
 
 There is to-day, it is true, as there has always 
 been, an invisible catholic Church, which is held 
 together by the mystic bonds of spiritual fellowship 
 
 1 Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism, p. 135. 
 
216 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 that transcend all boundaries and divisions. “Our 
 Church,” says Prof. Harnack, “is not the par- 
 ticular church in which we are placed, but the 
 societas fidei, which has its members everywhere, 
 even among Greeks and Romans.”^ This is a con- 
 ception to which the Christian heart has clung with 
 a persistence almost pathetic, amid all the visible 
 disunity with which the Church has been distracted. 
 But it is a conception that satisfies the Christian 
 conscience less completely every passing year; and 
 there is no indication of the spirit of our times more 
 evident or significant than the yearning for some 
 new and more universal order of Christianity in 
 which the unity of the faith may be visibly mani- 
 fested. It is a thought that is rising simultaneously 
 in a multitude of minds everywhere throughout the 
 Christian world, and that is being expressed in many 
 ways. 
 
 The ideal of organic unity has never been com- 
 pletely lost from the consciousness of the Church. 
 The Pauline ideal of the Church, that he trans- 
 mitted to the local congregations he founded, was 
 that of one body with many members, after the 
 analogy of the human organism. “For in one 
 Spirit,” he declares, “were we all baptized into one 
 body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; 
 and were all made to drink of one Spirit.”* “Now 
 
 1 What is Christianity? p. 276. ^ j. Cor. 12 : 13. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 217 
 
 ye are the body of Christ, and severally members 
 thereof.”^ The wonderful panegyric of Christian 
 love with which he follows the description of the 
 organic unity of the Church is meant to extol the 
 principle that is necessary for its attainment and 
 maintenance. The Church, even in the period of 
 its bitterest contentions, has not lacked for prophetic 
 souls whose voices have been raised in the interest 
 of unity and peace. Calvin wrote Cranmer in 1553, 
 “I should not hesitate to cross ten seas if by this 
 means holy communion might prevail among the 
 members of Christ.” Said George Calixtus, pro- 
 fessor in the University of Halmstadt, in a letter to 
 the Roman Catholic Universities of Germany, 
 breathing a tender spirit of reconciliation, “If I 
 may but help toward the healing of our schisms, I 
 will shrink from no cares and night-watchings, no 
 efforts and no dangers . . . nay, I will never spare 
 either my life or my blood, if so be I may purchase 
 the peace of the Church. Zwingli and Melanch- 
 thon, Grotius, Leibniz and Bossuet, Richard Bax- 
 ter,_Milton, Wesley, Jeremy Taylor, and John Locke 
 were all of them advocates of Christian unity, at 
 times when a belligerent sectarianism was tearing 
 Christians apart. 
 
 It is true that many an irenicon devised by large- 
 
 1 1. Cor. 12 : 27. 
 
 * Quoted by Peter Ainslie, The Message of the Disciples, etc. 
 
218 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 hearted leaders in the past has eome to naught; 
 but is this a reason why, in this generation, earnest 
 men should cease to pray and to labor for the uni- 
 fication of Christendom? History presents no 
 period so full of encouragement for the friends of a 
 real and visible unity of the Church. We live in a 
 new age wherein many of the barriers that once kept 
 men apart have been broken down. Geographical 
 hindrances have largely disappeared : we are nearer 
 to England to-day than was New York to Boston at 
 the beginning of the last century. Modern methods 
 of travel and of the intercommunication of thought 
 are fast transforming the world into a single com- 
 munity. In America, at least, political barriers have 
 been overthrown, and free churches, in a free land, 
 meet each other upon the same level, equal in all their 
 privileges. Theological bitterness is fast disappear- 
 ing and mutual respect and esteem are taking its 
 place. The divided churches are being driven to- 
 gether: they are also being drawn together by the 
 cords of love. The democratic and co-operative 
 spirit of the times provides an atmosphere favorable 
 to the unification of the churches, particularly in the 
 United States, where men of so many racial strains 
 are learning to live and labor together and to sink 
 their differences below the level of the new patriot- 
 ism that unites them. Prejudices as well as peoples 
 are in solution in “The Melting Pot.” 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 219 
 
 The utilitarian and pragmatic spirit of the preva- 
 lent philosophy, with its appetite for theories that 
 “work,” that produce results, and its regard for the 
 practical, tends to withdraw interest from the ab- 
 stractions that divide, and to concentrate it upon the 
 activities that unite. There is less disposition to-day 
 than ever to judge institutions by their claims: 
 “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Creeds are 
 measured by the same criterion. Christians in the 
 pew are willing to sacrifice for the spread of the 
 kingdom of God, but not to perpetuate divisions in 
 the Church unless some unquestionably valid rea- 
 son for their perpetuation can be offered. It may 
 be that the present halt in the enthusiasm of mis- 
 sionary propaganda may be due, not to any failure 
 of interest in the supreme mission of the Church, 
 but to a growing suspicion that there is something 
 fundamentally wrong in the method that the Church 
 is pursuing. That there are now in America 143 
 communions, every one of which justifies its sepa- 
 rate existence by the claim to possess some distinc- 
 tive and essential Christian truth not held by the 
 remainder, would seem to prove, if these claims 
 are true, that there are 142 necessary or valuable 
 Christian principles lacking in each one of the 
 denominational bodies, which to the ordinary mind 
 proves too much, and reduces the whole sorry scheme 
 to absurdity. 
 
220 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 The experiments in organized interdenominational 
 co-operation, which the nineteenth century inaugu- 
 rated, prepared the way for those experiments in 
 actual Church union which the twentieth century is 
 now conducting. In 1804 was organized the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society, followed in 1816 by the 
 American Bible Society. In 1817 there was formed 
 in Philadelphia “The Sunday and Adult School 
 Union,” the real beginning of the American Sunday- 
 School Union, which took its present name in 1824. 
 The Evangelical Alliance dates from 1846. Inter- 
 denominational movements such as the Young 
 Men’s Christian Association, the Young Women’s 
 Christian Association, and the United Society of 
 Christian Endeavor are gifts of the last century to 
 our own and have powerfully drawn the present 
 generation of Christians of every name together. 
 The famous fourfold proposals of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church for the unity of the Church were 
 issued at Chicago in 1886; in 1895 the Congrega- 
 tional Churches of the United States issued their 
 proposals of a similar character; in 1893 was organ- 
 ized the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, and in 1895 
 the League of Catholic Unity. These events indicate 
 the point to which the movement had progressed at 
 the close of the last century. 
 
 In 1905 was organized the Federal Council of 
 Churches of Christ in America, which, while it does 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 221 
 
 not advocate the principle of organic unity, is the 
 most ambitious experiment yet attempted in inter- 
 denominational co-operation. In 1910 the Protes- 
 tant Episcopal Church appointed a Joint Commission 
 to bring about a Conference for the consideration 
 of questions touching Faith and Order, and in the 
 same year the National Convention of the Disciples 
 appointed a Commission on Christian Union, and the 
 Congregationalists a Committee on Comity, Federa- 
 tion, and Unity, while by a noteworthy coinci- 
 dence the Synod of the Dioceses of the Church of 
 England in Australia and Tasmania was simul- 
 taneously appointing a committee to “watch for, 
 and, if possible, take advantage of any opportunity 
 which may be offered for further conference with 
 other religious bodies wdth a view to a better under- 
 standing of our mutual position and the further- 
 ance of union among Christians.” Since that time 
 Commissions of a similar nature have been ap- 
 pointed by the Presbyterians (North) and by the 
 Church of England in Canada. 
 
 The Episcopal Commission on a World Confer- 
 ence has invited and already secured the appoint- 
 ment of co-operating Commissions by more than 
 30 Protestant bodies, among which several countries 
 are represented. In May, 1913, a preliminary con- 
 ference of members of a number of these Commis- 
 sions was held in New York City, when, in a spirit 
 
222 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 of the utmost candor, with a full realization of the 
 difficulties with which the undertaking is con- 
 fronted, the first steps in preparation for the calling 
 of such a World Conference were taken with a 
 heartiness and unanimity full of encouragement for 
 the future. According to the resolutions adopted 
 at this meeting, the conception of the proposed Con- 
 ference is that of “a great meeting participated in 
 by men of all Christian churches within the scope 
 of the call, at which there shall be consideration not 
 only of points of difference and agreement among 
 Christians, but of the values of the various ap- 
 proximations of belief characteristic of the several 
 churches.” It was further declared “that while 
 organic unity is the ideal which all Christians should 
 have in their thoughts and prayers, yet the business 
 of the Commissions is not to force any particular 
 scheme of unity, but to promote the holding of such 
 a conference as is above described.” A deputation 
 appointed at this preliminary conference to confer 
 with the non-Anglican communions in England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland has since reported a favorable 
 hearing on the part of 31 groups of Christian leaders 
 in the countries visited, and the definite promise on 
 the part of each that the appointment of Commis- 
 sions on the World Conference would be recom- 
 mended to the annual meetings of the denomina- 
 tions represented. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 223 
 
 This proposed World Conference, suggested first, 
 in Westminster Abbey, by the great-hearted mis- 
 sionary leader. Bishop Brent of the Philippines, 
 adopted enthusiastically by the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church in its General Convention in Cincinnati in 
 1910, and recommended by it to all the divisions of 
 Christendom, has already received so large a measure 
 of approval on the part of other Protestant com- 
 munions, and is being projected with such breadth 
 of view, and in so generous a spirit, that all who 
 pray for the peace of the Church will watch, with 
 the deepest interest and concern, the progress 
 of the negotiations that must precede its convo- 
 cation. Some have thought the literature thus far 
 issued by the Episcopal Commission defining its 
 character and purpose, to be too deeply tinged with 
 sacerdotal and sacramentarian conceptions foreign to 
 the thought of a major proportion of American 
 Protestantism, to make it likely that such a con- 
 ference could accomplish more than did the an- 
 nouncement of the Chicago-Lambeth Proposals of 
 1888. In any event, however, a frank discussion 
 of differences and agreements upon a common 
 platform will do much to clear the air, and to reveal 
 the actual elements that enter into the problem of 
 unity upon a doctrinal basis. 
 
 The plans for the Conference contemplate the 
 participation of the Roman Catholic and Greek 
 
224 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Orthodox Churches, without which there can be 
 no re-establishment of catholicity. This introduces 
 difficulties that appear at first sight to be exceed- 
 ingly great. Because of the promulgation of the 
 dogma of papal infallibility, the possibility of re- 
 union with the Roman Catholic Church seems more 
 distant than at any previous time since the Reforma- 
 tion. “The reunion of the scattered branches of 
 Christendom,” Cardinal Gibbons has recently said, 
 “is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and I 
 would gladly sacrifice the remaining years of my life 
 in lending a helping hand toward this blessed result.” 
 But he proceeds to say, “The first essential require- 
 ment is the recognition of the sovereign pontiff, 
 who, as the successor of St. Peter, is the divinely 
 appointed head of Christendom. 
 
 It is inconceivable that Protestantism will ever 
 so stultify itself as to give even serious considera- 
 tion to such a suggestion. Yet the genius and his- 
 tory of the Roman Catholic Church are such that it 
 seems to be irrevocably committed to the dogma of 
 the infallibility of the pope, and by its solemn 
 promulgation to have shut itself out from the pos- 
 sibility of change or compromise. “To feel the 
 necessity, and to seek the ways, of gathering to- 
 gether the scattered members of Christ,” Bishop 
 Bonomelli of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cre- 
 
 1 Sept. 28, 1913, in a newspaper interview. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 225 
 
 mona has said, . . is a surpassingly noble and 
 beautiful aim, and worthy to be studied and trans- 
 lated into action with all zeal; and it is very con- 
 soling to see how our Protestant brothers are striv- 
 ing for this end with evident sincerity and thorough 
 good-will.” “I cannot, however,” he continues, 
 “shut my eyes to the very grave difficulty of the 
 enterprise; first of all, the situation of the Roman 
 Church, which cannot recede from its position, or 
 yield upon any essential point of its doctrine, with- 
 out being renegade to itself. The Roman Church, 
 with its definitions, with the affirmations repeated 
 a thousand times of its divine character, and with 
 all the acts of its govermnent, has cut down and is 
 cutting down every bridge behind it. It can well 
 allow itself to be joined by the dissident Churches 
 with unconditional submission; but it cannot turn 
 back, review its own decisions, modify its dogmas, 
 change its hierarchy, lessen its authority. . . . 
 And in this, I believe, consists the greatest obstacle 
 to that unity, the need of which is so deeply felt.”^ 
 But the spirit of the times is profoundly affecting 
 this, as well as all other churches, especially in 
 America. The powerful and wide-spread movement 
 within the Roman Church known as modernism, 
 which, in some of its phases, appears to be a reasser- 
 tion of the primitive gospel of the apostles, and an 
 
 * The Constructive Quarterly, Sept., 1913, p. 445 ff. 
 
 15 
 
226 THE UNION OP CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 approach to the evangelical principles held by- 
 Protestantism, is a sign of promise of a better 
 understanding between these two great divisions of 
 the Church, even though the outcome of that 
 movement is still in doubt. If some day there should 
 sit upon St. Peter’s throne a modernist pope, sus- 
 ceptible to the thousand influences that are empha- 
 sizing the simple forms of experience and belief 
 which characterized the life of the earliest disciples 
 and that are drawing Protestants into a new unity 
 upon the basis of a New Testament Christianity, the 
 hope of a closer approach of Catholic to Protestant 
 would receive an impetus quite beyond our present 
 ability to measure. 
 
 There is no apparent indication of the drawing 
 together of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox 
 Churches. “It might seem,” writes Archbishop 
 Platon of the Greek Church, “that no Church is 
 closer to the Orthodox than is the Roman Catholic. 
 Chief among their resemblances, the two have the 
 same number of sacraments; yet the distance be- 
 tween them is so great as to terrify us; it is almost 
 immeasurable.”^ So far as the relation between the 
 Greek Orthodox and Protestant communions other 
 than the Anglican is concerned, it is sufficient to 
 say that the grounds upon which Archbishop Platon 
 thinks some approach of Anglicans and Greek Ortho- 
 
 ' The Constructive Quarterly, September, 1913, p. 434 fif. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 227 
 
 dox Christians to one another may be possible, 
 namely, the rejection on the part of the Anglicans 
 of the dogmatic authority of the Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles of the Church of England, which deny the 
 sacramentarian character of holy orders, would 
 probably raise an issue upon which most non- 
 Anglican bodies would find it difficult to unite with 
 either Anglicans or Greeks. Many of the obstacles 
 that stand in the way of Church reunion must be 
 left to time and the Spirit of God to remove, in 
 the confidence that what to man may seem impos- 
 sible, is possible to God. 
 
 The ultimate union of Protestantism with the 
 Roman and Orthodox Churches must in any case 
 be preceded by the reunion of Protestantism itself. 
 To that practicable and hopeful task the advocates 
 of Christian unity within the Protestant churches 
 will do well for the present to confine themselves. 
 And the first step in that direction must surely be 
 the combination of the various divisions of particular 
 denominations. Unity is probably to come by 
 piecemeal. Of the 12 bodies of Presbyterians, 18 of 
 Methodists, and 13 of Baptists, the larger branches 
 are kept apart by the purely geographical divisions 
 of North and South. There is no latitude nor 
 longitude in the kingdom of God, and when these 
 artificial divisions are swept away by the rising tide 
 of Christian love, the way will be cleared for the 
 
228 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 union of the manifold varieties of varieties of Chris- 
 tians that are separated now by distinctions often 
 so minute as to be indiscernible. When the Direc- 
 tor of the Census can distinguish between two 
 Christian bodies only by the difference in the color 
 of the covers of their respective annual reports/ 
 it would certainly seem that unity might be possible 
 without loss to either. The combinations of de- 
 nominational fractions into integers are taking place 
 with increasing frequency. Already Baptists and 
 Free Baptists have consummated a practical union 
 in their missionary agencies, and a complete union 
 in many of the states. The Old School and the New 
 School Presbyterians, who divided in 1837 on doc- 
 trinal grounds, came together again in 1869 on a 
 basis of orthodoxy and liberty, while in 1875 four 
 divisions of Presbyterians in Canada came together 
 in a single organization, and the following year saw 
 the combination of the Presbyterian and the United 
 Presbyterian Churches of England. 
 
 More recently, in 1900, the United Free Church 
 of Scotland was formed to include the Free and the 
 United Presbyterian Churches of that country, and 
 almost simultaneously six Presbyterian churches in 
 Australia and two in New Zealand came harmo- 
 niously together. The Northern and Southern divi- 
 sions of the Presbyterian Church, the Reformed 
 
 * Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States, p. xix. 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 229 
 
 Church, and the United Presbyterian Church are 
 engaged in negotiations that appear to promise a 
 closer union of Presbyterians within the United 
 States in the near future. Nor are the Methodists 
 behind in this fraternal movement. The Method- 
 ists in Canada, until 1874 divided into five indepen- 
 dent bodies, united in a single inclusive church in 
 1883, and a similar union has taken place in Australia. 
 At the present moment, the two branches of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, North and South, and 
 the Methodist Protestant Church are considering 
 the formation of a united Methodism. Already 
 Commissions from the United Brethren and the 
 Methodist Protestant Church have agreed to unite, 
 subject to the ratification of their General Con- 
 ferences. Such tendencies in these three typical de- 
 nominations are characteristic of the spirit of the new 
 era within other Protestant bodies. The organic 
 union of the Lutheran and the German Reformed 
 Churches in Prussia, long ago consummated under 
 a single government and administration, with liberty 
 in the use of creeds and catechisms, was no more 
 easily accomplished than might be a similar union 
 among the related branches of these churches in 
 America. The desire for such formal union is 
 spreading among all the Lutheran bodies in this 
 country, with the possible exception of the Missouri 
 Synod. The plans for the union of the Old Nor- 
 
230 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 wegian Synod, the United Norwegian Lutherans, 
 and the Hauge Synod are already practically com- 
 plete. Many Lutherans cherish the hope that by 
 1917, when the four hundredth anniversary of the 
 beginning of the Reformation is to be celebrated, it 
 will be possible to adopt some plan of union that 
 shall be acceptable to all the Lutheran bodies in 
 America. 
 
 Following such unification of divisions of single 
 denominations, we may hope for the combination of 
 such separate communions as may most effectively 
 and easily unite in administration and service. Al- 
 ready the project of the union of the Presbyterian, 
 Methodist, and Congregational churches in Canada' 
 is hopefully advancing toward completion, under the 
 name of “The United Church of Canada,” and in 
 its magnitude and meaning it well deserves to be 
 characterized as “an extraordinary movement, 
 in some respects not paralleled for several cen- 
 turies.” Twenty years ago the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church and the Presbyterian Church, North, 
 entered into negotiations looking toward union, 
 and though the plan of union failed at that time, 
 it was for causes that would hardly prevail to-day 
 in either communion. From South Africa we hear 
 of attempts of Baptists, Congregationalists, Method- 
 ists, and Presbyterians to form a closer union; and 
 from Australia, of similar attempts on the part of 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 231 
 
 Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and 
 Episcopalians. 
 
 In many parts of the world fresh indications of the 
 prevalence of the spirit that is healing the divisions 
 of Christendom and drawing the hearts of Christians 
 together are manifest, and so rapid is the progress of 
 the movement that it is impossible adequately to 
 record it. Denominations diverse in their methods 
 of government, and that have been thought to be 
 as wide asunder as the poles in their conceptions, 
 are anxiously seeking a platform upon which they 
 can unite hearts and hands in their common tasks. 
 At a recent meeting of the Free Church Council of 
 Great Britain, which includes all the great dis- 
 senting bodies, an enthusiastic reception was given 
 to the proposal of the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, that 
 all the non-conformist churches of the country 
 should come together under the title, “The United 
 Free Church of Great Britain.” On the foreign 
 mission field, as we have seen, the cause of Chris- 
 tian unity thrives apace, and the anxiety of its 
 best friends is lest its progress be more rapid than 
 wise. “The Christian Church in China” bids fair 
 to unify, before very long, all the stronger Protes- 
 tant forces of the republic, and the spirit of China 
 is reflected in all Oriental missionary situations. We 
 are in the midst to-day of a mighty movement, as 
 significant as the Reformation, that is sweeping 
 
232 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 with irresistible power over the entire world, and 
 that is shortly to change the face of Christendom. 
 Who can doubt that it is of God? 
 
 The churches in America are learning and borrow- 
 ing from each other, and approximating to one 
 another in many respects. The tendency upon the 
 foreign mission field to-day is toward as large a 
 measure as possible of independence and self-govern- 
 ment for the local church. In America, even in de- 
 nominations episcopally governed, there is a larger 
 degree of independence of action upon the part of 
 the local congregation than would have been possible 
 a quarter of a century ago; while, on the other hand, 
 there is a decided tendency toward co-ordination 
 and centralization among denominations of the 
 congregational and independent order. The ob- 
 servance of the church year is coming into increas- 
 ing favor among communions that once wholly 
 ignored it, and liturgical embellishments of the 
 service are finding their way into non-liturgical 
 churches. Many indications point toward the de- 
 velopment of a tjqie of church to which no de- 
 nomination at present wholly conforms, but to 
 which every denomination is contributing some- 
 thing distincth^ely its own. 
 
 The establishment of the Constructive Quarterly, 
 in 1913, a magazine of the highest order, whose 
 avowed purpose it is to create “a better understand- 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 233 
 
 ing between the isolated communions of Christen- 
 dom,” is at once a sign of the spirit of the times, and 
 likely to become a powerful influence in accelera- 
 ting the spread of that spirit. “It is not neutral 
 territory that is sought,” declares the publisher, 
 “where courtesy and diplomacy would naturally 
 tend to avoid issues and to round off the sharp edges 
 of truth and conviction, but rather common ground 
 where loyalty to Christ and to convictions about 
 him and his Church will be secure from the tendency 
 to mere compromise or to superficial and artificial 
 comprehension. The purpose is to create an atmos- 
 phere of mutual confidence and to induce a better 
 understanding and a truer sense of fellowship.” 
 
 If this movement is of God, nothing can check it, 
 and he who would serve his generation must lend 
 his hand to further it. “The reunion of Christen- 
 dom,” declared Prof. Goldwin Smith, “is likely at 
 last to become a practical aim. Probably it would 
 be a greater service to humanity, on philosophical as 
 well as religious grounds, to contribute the smallest 
 unit toward this consummation, than to construct 
 the most perfect demonstration of the free per- 
 sonality of man. As things are, rationalism and 
 fatalistic reveries may be laboriously confuted, but 
 amidst the energies and aspirations of a regenerated 
 Christendom they would spontaneously disappear.”^ 
 
 ^ Lectures on the Study of History^ p. 181. 
 
234 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Questions as to procedure and method are still in 
 solution; but this great guiding principle, at least, 
 is emerging from the aspiration, and prayer, and free 
 discussion which are gathering about the great 
 theme, that unity will manifest itself in proportion 
 as the hearts of Christian people are prepared for it, 
 and as the tide of devotion to the Head of the Church, 
 and to the cause of his Kingdom rises to the flood. 
 
 “I stood beside the sea one day, 
 
 The tide was low; 
 
 With quiet flow 
 
 It scarcely lapped the ocean’s rim, 
 
 Whose waving lines, now clear, now dim. 
 
 Revealed the shelving, sandy beach. 
 
 Where oft the waves 
 To watery graves 
 In quick succession swiftly bore 
 Each other as they climbed the shore. 
 
 The little hollows in the sand. 
 
 Like silvery nests 
 Where sunshine rests, 
 
 Just for the time appeared to me 
 As lasting as the shore to be; 
 
 But later, when the tide had turned, 
 
 I found no trace 
 In any place 
 
 Of all the basins, which had seemed 
 So lasting as they gleamed 
 Beneath the glowing summer sun. 
 
 Why had they fled 
 Like bright hopes dead? 
 
ORGANIC CHURCH UNITY 
 
 235 
 
 Because the ocean in its sweep 
 Had gathered all in one great deep. 
 Here in the pools upon the sand 
 I seem to find 
 Within my mind 
 
 A type of churches, sects and creeds, 
 Established for the great world’s needs; 
 Just for a while they will remain. 
 
 Each with its plan 
 For blessing man. 
 
 Till God’s great love, like ocean-tide. 
 
 In one shall all divisions hide. 
 
 'Then, folded on our Father’s breast. 
 Like tired child 
 That wept and smiled. 
 
 At last, we all shall come to see 
 One Church, in its divinity.”^ 
 
 * Margaret May, “Pools in the Sand.' 
 

THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
True basis of organic unity. — Other foundations discussed; 
 The Anglican ideal; Proposals presented by the General 
 Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.— The two 
 theories of the Christian ministry, the sacerdotal and the 
 Protestant, stated. — Difference of opinion among Anglican 
 scholars concerning apostolic succession. — Unity not to be 
 found in agreement concerning validity of ministerial orders. 
 — Lord’s Supper and baptism cause of differences. — Uni- 
 formity in practice and doctrine concerning the ordinances 
 not essential to organic unity. — Unity not to be secured by 
 absorption. — Ancient creeds or decrees of Councils do not 
 offer a basis for organic unity. — Unity in the apostolic Church 
 among men of different temperaments and convictions. — 
 Love for Christ and for one another secret of past and future 
 organic unity. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 The only basis upon which the organic unity of 
 all denominations in a single church can ever be 
 secured and maintained is that upon which the 
 unity of the first disciples rested, — loyalty to God in 
 Christ and a personal experience of his presence and 
 power within the individual soul. Back to the first 
 century we must go, to the living springs at which 
 the earliest Christians drank, if we are to find that 
 source of fellowship in service and worship of which 
 the Lord of the Church was thinking when he 
 prayed “that they may all be one; even as thou. 
 Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
 be in us.” 
 
 Other foundations have been and are still proposed 
 as those upon which the unification of Christendom 
 should be attempted, particularly identity of church 
 polity, and of creed; but in no one of them is there 
 any promise of success. The tenacity with which 
 the divided churches cling to conscientious convic- 
 tions as to doctrine, and to cherished modes of wor- 
 ship or forms of polity that they believe to be 
 authoritative, is neither to be ignored nor depre- 
 cated. The lessening of the force of religious con- 
 
 239 
 
240 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 viction would be too high a price to pay for unity, 
 greatly as that is to be desired, since fidelity to con- 
 science is to be preferred above it. The only unity 
 for which the Church can pray is one that leaves 
 these intact and free to develop in all their diversity; 
 for even the divisions within the ranks of the Church 
 are not so threatening as would be the deadening 
 effects of uniformity. It is not necessary, however, 
 that forms of polity shall be identical before the 
 Church can be united ; or that rituals, helpful to the 
 spirit of worship of any body of Christians, shall be 
 discarded; or that doctrines conscientiously held 
 shall be abandoned. The level of attachment must 
 be deeper than any one of these, and sought in the 
 possession of a common spiritual experience which is 
 essential, as these are not. “In essentials unity, 
 in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity” 
 is the only possible program by which the unifica- 
 tion of Christendom can be secured. 
 
 The divided churches can never be frozen together: 
 they must be welded into one if the union is to be 
 either strong or permanent. That neither polity 
 nor doctrine will suffice for a basis of the reunion 
 that Christendom is seeking is evident from the 
 history of the attempts to secure it upon such 
 foundations. Neither the Roman ideal of formal 
 unity under the absolute authority of the pope and 
 the Roman curia, nor what may be called the Greek 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 241 
 
 ideal, based upon a rigid orthodoxy, goes deep 
 enough to serve as the foundation of a unity that 
 shall be spiritual and vital. The Anglican ideal 
 combines both of these elements, being that of 
 organic and visible unity on a fourfold basis: the 
 Scriptures, the two ancient creeds, the two great 
 sacraments, and the historic episcopate; but it is 
 questionable whether it contains any larger promise 
 of success than those which have preceded it. 
 
 This last proposal, the most famous ever pro- 
 pounded for the unity of the Church, attracted at 
 its appearance the attention of the entire Christian 
 world. It has been the rare privilege and honor of 
 one of the smallest Protestant bodies in America 
 to be the first to make definite overtures to the di- 
 vided Christian forces, and even to be followed by 
 the mother Church of England. These propositions, 
 first issued in 1886, by the General Convention of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church in Chicago, and, 
 in 1888, reissued, with minor changes, by the Con- 
 ference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion, held 
 in Lambeth Palace, read as follows: 
 
 That, in the opinion of this Conference, the following 
 Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God’s 
 blessing made toward Home Reunion; 
 
 (a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
 as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as 
 being the rule and ultimate standard of Faith. 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 (b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the baptismal symbol; and 
 the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian 
 Faith. 
 
 (c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself, — 
 Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, — administered with 
 unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the 
 elements ordained by him. 
 
 (d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the meth- 
 ods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations 
 and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church. 
 
 These proposals, which have called forth volumes 
 of comment and criticism, have performed a most 
 valuable service in bringing forcibly to the atten- 
 tion of the Christian world the question of unity 
 and the elements that are involved in it. The first 
 three propositions have received wide acceptance 
 on the part of representatives of evangelical de- 
 nominations; the center about which controversy 
 and dissent has gathered being the fourth, which 
 deals with the historic episcopate. If this proposi- 
 tion is concerned merely with a form of church 
 polity, the strength and fervor of the dissent and 
 opposition which it has aroused would seem to be 
 disproportionate to its importance. The episco- 
 pate presented as an historic institution apart from 
 any theory of its origin and claims, — that is to say, 
 a mere governmental as distinguished from a sacer- 
 dotal episcopacy,-— would probably not be repugnant 
 to other Protestants. If the Church were forced 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 243 
 
 to choose between the two, it would doubtless prefer 
 hierarchy to anarchy. Episcopacy is already the 
 de facto government of three-fourths, if not of four- 
 fifths, of Christendom. Of the three prevalent forms 
 of polity, congregational, presbyterial, and episcopal, 
 however, scholars appear to agree that all co-existed, 
 in germ at least, in the undivided Church of apostolic 
 times. No one of them seems to have so far es- 
 tablished its pre-eminent efficiency as to have 
 proved itself to be fittest of all to survive and to 
 control the Church of the future. Questions of 
 polity, therefore, should not be permitted perma- 
 nently to divide the Church. 
 
 Much cannot, however, be expected for the cause 
 of unity from agreement in polity alone. The 
 several episcopally governed denominations, or 
 congregationally governed denominations, are no 
 nearer to each other than are episcopal to congre- 
 gational bodies. Polities will not serve as a ground 
 of unity, though they may, if associated with theo- 
 ries of their exclusive validity, prove to be a ground 
 of division. 
 
 It is because of the persistent suspicion that “the 
 historic episcopate” as here suggested is associated 
 with such a theory that the Lambeth Proposals have 
 not received a wider acceptance on the part of non- 
 Anglican churches. It is not to the historic episco- 
 pate, but to the dogma of an “apostolic succession” 
 
244 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 usually attached to it, which makes the Church de- 
 pendent upon a valid administration of the sacra- 
 ments, and this in turn dependent upon a sacerdotal 
 theory of the ministry, that the great mass of 
 Protestantism objects. There are two theories of 
 the Christian ministry that are diametrically opposed 
 to one another. One is based upon the conception 
 that “the Validity of Orders depends upon the Apos- 
 tolic Commission perpetuated in unbroken succes- 
 sion of the ministry in the Christian Church.”^ 
 Those who hold it declare “that our Lord com- 
 missioned the Twelve with his authority over his 
 Kingdom or Church, and that this authority was to 
 be exercised in the use of the functions of prophecy, 
 priesthood, and royalty, reflecting his own authority 
 in these three spheres. They had (1) prophetic 
 authority to preach and to teach; (2) priestly 
 authority to celebrate the sacraments of baptism 
 and of the Lord’s Supper and conduct the worship 
 of the Church; (3) royal authority to organize the 
 Church, and to govern and discipline the disciples 
 whom they received into the Church by baptism and 
 whom they retained in the fellowship of the Holy 
 Communion. In the first of these commissions the 
 prophetic authority is most prominent, in the second 
 the power of the keys, in the third the priestly or 
 sacramental function. But they all are involved in 
 
 ' Prof. C. A. Briggs, Church Unity, p. 103. 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 245 
 
 the true functions and full commission of the aposto- 
 late and their successors in the Christian ministry. 
 . . . Jesus Christ . . . committed his authority 
 while absent from this earth to a ministering body 
 which should exercise all these functions on his be- 
 half and for the benefit of the entire Kingdom.” 
 
 Quite irreconcilable with such a theory is that 
 usually held by evangelical Protestant churches, 
 namely, that all spiritual authority is resident in 
 personality, and is dependent upon spiritual quali- 
 fications, and, by its very nature, cannot be con- 
 veyed from those who have it to those who have it 
 not. Spiritual grace, according to this conception, 
 cannot be transferred like a package over a counter; 
 nor transmitted cutaneously, as it were, or by physi- 
 cal contact, as electricity from a Leyden jar. He 
 who would possess and exercise it must gain it di- 
 rectly at its source, from the great Head of the 
 Church. All that the Church can do is to recognize 
 these qualifications where they exist, and set its seal 
 upon them. No compromise is possible between 
 the two theories of the Christian ministry, the sacer- 
 dotal or priestly, and the republican or Protestant: 
 they represent two mutually contradictory concep- 
 tions of religion. To many the idea of the transmis- 
 sion of authority in religion within a priestly hier- 
 archy seems to belong with the monarchical scheme 
 of government, the theory of the divine right of 
 
246 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 kings, and the succession of kings within a single 
 dynasty, which were the prevailing notions in the 
 formative years of the Church, and which so pro- 
 foundly influenced its thought and development; 
 but it appears to such to be out of place in an 
 era of democracy, when all men are proclaimed to 
 be equal in political rights and in the sight of God, 
 and under a republican form of government where 
 all authority is delegated by the people to those 
 believed to be morally and spiritually competent 
 to wield it. In a republic the son no longer suc- 
 ceeds his father in places of authority, nor does the 
 incumbent nominate or appoint his successor in 
 political offlce. The atmosphere generated by re- 
 publican institutions is inhospitable to the dogma of 
 an apostolic succession : it finds no analogies in other 
 fields, and speaks in a language which experience can 
 no longer interpret. 
 
 The whole contention, moreover, seems to a large 
 section of Protestantism to be quite foreign to the 
 real purpose of the Church. The Apostle Paul de- 
 clares that he might have prided himself upon 
 ecclesiastical regularity. He tells us that he was 
 circumcised the eighth day, a Hebrew of the He- 
 brews, as touching the law, a Pharisee, — but that he 
 counted all this to be loss for Christ. Such claims 
 had their value, and such qualifications their potency, 
 under the old r^ime of the law; but under grace 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UISHTY 247 
 
 they were worthless. Christianity, as Canon Fre- 
 mantle of the Anglican Church has forcibly pointed 
 \/ , out,^ is, according to the New Testament, primarily 
 a life, and only secondarily a system of doctrine, 
 \ public worship, and clerical government. “Why, 
 then,” he asks, “is so disproportionate an amount 
 of Christian effort spent on these last? And why 
 are disputes about them allowed to hinder us from 
 any serious and united movement for making the 
 common life really Christian?” It must be ac- 
 knowledged that union with Christ constitutes a 
 Christian, and that all who are accepted of Christ 
 are members of his Church, in whatever communion 
 they may be found, and it would not appear that 
 such membership can be made to depend upon 
 grace conferred through any human channels 
 whatsoever. 
 
 As to questions of historic fact upon which the 
 doctrine of an apostolic succession depends, there 
 j j appear to be grave differences of opinion among 
 scholars of the Anglican communion, and it is little 
 1 wonder that the remainder of American Protestant- 
 \ ism is unwilling to accept the doctrine as an essen- 
 tial part of the program of Christian unity until 
 Bishops Gore and Hall and Professor Moberly, who 
 profess it, can be reconciled with Bishops Lightfoot 
 and Brown, and Professor Hort, who reject it. For 
 
 1 The World as the Subject of Redemption^ p. x. 
 
248 
 
 THE UNION OF CHEISTIAN FORCES 
 
 many Protestant bodies the ground is cut below all 
 such controversies by their conviction that even if 
 the facts in question were substantiated, and the 
 theory justified, no spiritual gain would accrue to 
 the Church, or any jure divino authority be estab- 
 lished. They ask only for the marks of fidelity and 
 efficiency in Christian service, and count these to be 
 adequate credentials for the exercise of a Christian 
 ministry. 
 
 It is safe to say that the prevalent spirit of 
 Protestantism as a whole offers no hope that a basis 
 
 . of agreement and unity will ever be found in a com- 
 mon doctrine as to what constitutes a valid order of 
 the ministry of the Church. The Roman Catholic 
 Church admits the validity of the orders of the Greek 
 Orthodox Church, yet no two churches are farther 
 apart in their sympathies. Both the Roman and the 
 Greek Churches, on the other hand, deny the valid- 
 ity of the orders of the Anglican and Protestant 
 Episcopal Churches, who, in turn, deny the valid- 
 ity of the orders of all dissenting churches, while 
 within the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal 
 Churches are those who claim validity for their 
 own orders on the ground of apostolic succession, 
 those who doubt or deny it, and those who do not 
 regard apostolic succession as essential to such 
 validity. Evidently there is no way out of our dis- 
 unity in this direction. Moreover, it does not seem 
 
 / 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 249 
 
 likely that unity will ever be achieved by any 
 method which, by requiring re-ordination, or other- 
 wise, discredits the credentials of any church or 
 ministry that Christ has honored with his presence 
 and blessing, and denies its right to labor in the 
 Lord’s vineyard. Opinions as to the validity of 
 orders are among the non-essentials with regard to 
 which the widest liberty must be allowed. In the 
 coming Catholicism there must be made room for 
 the hospitable reception of the most diverse con- 
 ceptions as to ecclesiastical regularity. 
 
 It is one of the sad effects of the divided state of 
 the Church that Christian institutions that were 
 originally meant to manifest the unity of the Church 
 often serve to accentuate and widen the gulfs that 
 separate one Christian body from another. This 
 is true of the sacraments, which, variously con- 
 ceived and administered, have become the occasion 
 of division. It is at the Supper of the Lord, sig- 
 nificantly called the “holy communion,” where 
 Christians partake of the one body broken for all, 
 that they divide to right and left. There is a pathetic 
 note in the statement adopted by the Lahore Confer- 
 ence of workers of all denominations in India, called 
 by the Edinburgh Continuation Committee, in 
 which this gathering of Christian men and women, 
 eager for a larger manifestation of the spirit of 
 unity, after declaring that “it has to be recognized. 
 
250 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 with whatever regret, that we belong to various 
 branches of the Church of Christ which on certain 
 questions of order and polity hold divergent views,” 
 proceeds to resolve that “it is, for the present, ad- 
 visable for us to refrain from considering that the 
 absence of the observance of the Sacrament of the 
 Holy Communion at interdenominational gatherings 
 implies a lack of the spirit of unity.” Thus, too, 
 Christians, though “in one Spirit all baptized into 
 one body,” are divided by questions as to the mode 
 and subjects of the ordinance of baptism. “On 
 the question of requirements for baptism,” declared 
 the Lahore Conference, “we recommend that, owing 
 to the wide diversity of practice in our Missionary 
 Societies, a serious attempt be made to have greater 
 uniformity of conditions required of candidates for 
 baptism.” This is a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished also in the home land. 
 
 Agreement in doctrine and practice with respect 
 to the sacraments is, nevertheless, not sufiicient to 
 I effect the unity of the Church, nor ought differences 
 of conception here to be sufficient to prevent it. 
 The Roman Catholic and Greek Churches agree on 
 such points also, but this does not bridge the chasm 
 that separates them. Baptists and the Disciples of 
 Christ are in accord in the practice of immersion, 
 but it has not drawn them together a whit. On the 
 other hand, it is possible for those holding widely 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 251 
 
 divergent views as to the meaning, mode, and 
 efficacy of the sacraments, to unite in worship and 
 service and Christian fellowship, so long as liberty 
 is accorded to all. How shall we treat those who 
 differ from ourselves in their interpretations of the 
 ordinances? Just as God treats them. Does he 
 discriminate in favor of immersionists, or bless those 
 who hold one conception of the Lord’s Supper above 
 those who hold another? The confines of his King- 
 dom are broad enough to include them all. 
 
 Much the same may be said of theological formula. 
 Creeds and confessions of faith, meant to draw 
 Christians together, have driven them apart. 
 Church unity never has existed, and never can be 
 secured upon a basis of theology; but neither should 
 controversies in this regard be permitted to keep 
 Christian hands and hearts apart. The differences 
 between the manifold creeds of Christendom are so 
 extreme that it would be impossible for all Chris- 
 tians to unite in any formal statement of faith ex- 
 cept in a few general and soulless propositions of 
 natural theology. But where theology divides, 
 religion, the life which theology often vainly seeks 
 to describe, unites. Men may enjoy experiences 
 essentially the same while differing widely in their 
 interpretations of them. The centrifugal forces 
 that drive the disciples of Jesus apart are of the 
 head: the centripetal forces that draw them to- 
 
252 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 gether and toward the central Christ issue from the 
 heart. We may expect a larger degree of agree- 
 ment in doctrine after the churches have come to- 
 gether to pray and praise and serve than will ever 
 be possible before. “The time will come,” it has 
 been well said, “when the more we differ, the better 
 we shall be agreed: differing in the smaller, agree- 
 ing in the larger things: far apart in the spreading 
 branches, knit together in the sturdy trunk.” It is 
 possible now as never before to tolerate great diver- 
 sities of doctrine within a single Church, because 
 men are learning to grant to others the liberty which 
 they claim for themselves, to respect differences of 
 conviction, and to work together in spite of them. 
 
 No single denomination now in existence is fitted 
 to gather into itself the various divisions of Christen- 
 I dom and thus become that Church of the future for 
 which we are looking. The spirit that claims that 
 any single communion is entitled to be recognized 
 as the true Church of Christ in an exclusive sense is 
 hostile to the spirit of unity. The problem of unity 
 is not to be solved by all Christians eventually be- 
 coming Baptists, Methodists, or Episcopalians, or 
 by any similar transformation; nor by all Chris- 
 tians becoming Protestants, or all Roman Catholics, 
 or members of the Greek Orthodox Church. So far 
 as its formal organization is concerned, it is evident 
 that organic union must come, not through exclusion 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 253 
 
 or compromise or absorption, or by any process, so 
 to speak, of deglutition, by which any single de- 
 nomination will swallow up the rest, like another 
 Aaron’s rod turned serpent, but by comprehension. 
 The three hundred bishops of the Anglican Church 
 in their last conference in Lambeth Palace said, “We 
 have set before us the Church of Christ as he would 
 have it, one Spirit and one Body, enriched with all 
 those elements of divine truth which the separated 
 communities of Christians now emphasize separately. 
 . . . We must fix our eyes on the Church of the 
 future, which is to be adorned with all the precious 
 things, both theirs and ours. We must constantly 
 desire not compromise, but comprehension; not 
 uniformity, but unity.” These are truly , irenic 
 words. There must be abundant room withiii the 
 new catholicity for differences in polity, creed, and 
 ritual: each company of Christians must be per- 
 mitted to bring into it the things that they hold 
 sacred. Within the universal Church, which is 
 Christ’s body, there is unity amid diversity, — differ- 
 ence in functions and methods with unity in aim, 
 diversity in gifts, variety in manifestations, but 
 the one Spirit everywhere, — and the whole is con- 
 trolled by the Head, which is Christ. The divisions 
 that Paul decries are those that grow out of a parti- 
 san spirit, and that rally about disruptive and par- 
 tial interpretations of truth, or that cleave to human 
 
254 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 leadership, and so divide the indwelling Christ: he 
 does not demand uniformity among the elements 
 that compose the Church. Within the united 
 Church of the apostles there was abundant oppor- 
 tunity for differences of view and of activity. Paul 
 and Peter did not always see eye to eye, but both 
 frowned upon the spirit of faction and dwelt to- 
 gether within a catholic Church. 
 
 Where, then, shall we find a foundation broad and 
 stable enough for the erection of such a Christian 
 edifice as this? Shall we seek it by returning to the 
 days that preceded the Reformation and starting 
 anew? “The only way in which Roman Chris- 
 tianity and Protestant Christianity can legally com- 
 bine,” writes Prof. C. A. Briggs, “is for Protestant 
 Christianity to frankly recognize the technical irreg- 
 ularity of the Reformation; its revolutionary and 
 illegal character; and for the Roman Church to 
 repeal and recall all its unrighteous discipline.”^ 
 History cannot be thus unwritten. The conse- 
 quences of the Reformation are irrevocable, and are 
 too precious still in the eyes of those wRo have 
 profited by them to be regretted or revoked. Noth- 
 ing that this generation can do could reach back into 
 the past and stay the hands that lighted the fires of 
 Smithfield, Prague, and Rome, any more than it can 
 dim the luster of the names of those who died amid 
 
 ^ Church Unity, p. 174. 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 255 
 
 their flames. And even if Protestantism could be 
 so recreant to its trust and so false to its history, and 
 to the prophets and martjTS whose deeds adorn its 
 annals, as to desire to undo the past, could Roman 
 Catholicism, now fettered by the doctrine of the 
 infallibility of its titular head, retract its pro- 
 nouncements or retrace its steps? Protestantism 
 must first unite upon a platform so broad that all 
 can stand upon it, and then a united Protestantism 
 must meet a united Catholicism upon the level of 
 equality. There is no hope for organic unity except 
 upon what Bishop Brown of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church has called the “level plan.” 
 
 No progress can be made by seeking a basis of 
 reunion in the days before the Reformation, or in 
 going back to the fifteenth century to begin over 
 ^ again. Nor shall we succeed better if we go still 
 further back to the second and third centuries, to 
 find in the diocesan bishop (then first distinguished 
 from the parochial bishop, elder, or presbyter), and 
 his successors, the visible expression and source of 
 the unity of the Church, for, as we have seen, agree- 
 ment as to polities and sources of authority do not 
 suffice to create or to sustain the unity of the 
 Church to-day. The doctrines of these early days, 
 moreover, will serve us no better. “The basis of 
 union,” said Dr. Dollinger, “must be the Nicene 
 Creed, and the decisions of the first three General 
 
256 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Councils.” But, alas, the decrees of the first three 
 General Councils did not secure unity of spirit in 
 their day, and a unity in form devoid of spiritual 
 unity is a body without a soul, powerless and dead. 
 Subscription to creeds will not unite the Church 
 to-day. There are churches, such as the Baptist, 
 without any written creeds whatsoever, that manifest 
 a rare degree of unity in both faith and order. Nor 
 is the desired end to be secured by returning to that 
 conception of the ordinances that was unfolded dur- 
 ing these many years. How far doctrines as to the 
 efficacy of the sacraments, as they have been de- 
 veloped through the centuries, have been influenced 
 by the impact of pagan ideas upon the gospel is a 
 question upon which there is a legitimate difference 
 of opinion among historians; but this at least is 
 true, that questions as to polity, creed, and sacra- 
 ment are all of them dependent upon questions of 
 historic fact, and this alone is sufficient to destroy 
 their usefulness as grounds of unity. Over and over 
 again the Church has made the mistake of pinning its 
 faith to statements of fact which historical criticism 
 may at any moment prove to be untenable. It is 
 impossible to build so great a structure as the unity 
 of the Church upon such shifting ground. 
 
 The only dependable basis for the unity of the 
 Church is to be found, not in the field of doctrine, 
 
 I government, or ordinances, but in the field of spir- 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 257 
 
 itual experience, in a living experience of God in 
 Christ in the heart of the believer, the same to-day 
 as in the first days of the Church, and that is capa- 
 ble of perpetual reproduction in the lives of men of 
 every age, and so of continual renewal and substan- 
 tiation for each generation as it appears. Of 
 Peter’s confession of his Lordship, Jesus said, “Upon 
 this rock I will build my Church.” The basis of 
 unity that sufficed for the first disciples is the only 
 basis that can serve the twentieth century. 
 
 If we are to find in history the bond of unity for 
 the Church of the future, we must go back to the 
 beginning. To return to the days that preceded 
 the Reformation or even to those of the Church 
 of the first centuries will not avail; for with every 
 development in the complexity of faith the seeds 
 of division have been more widely sown. If a 
 foundation is to be found that cannot be shaken, we 
 must dig below the accretions of the centuries, be- 
 neath the loam and the subsoil of Christian history 
 to the simple faith of the first disciples of the Lord. 
 The fewer and simpler the principles reckoned 
 essential, the larger the munber who can stand 
 together upon them. Particularity breeds diver- 
 sity. What held together the group of disciples 
 that met on Pentecost in the upper room? Sub- 
 scription to a written creed? Christians before the 
 creeds were more truly united than have been any 
 17 
 
258 
 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTIAN FORCES 
 
 Christians since, and the cause of unity might be ad- 
 vanced if every historic creed outside the Bible were 
 forgotten or lost. Was it acceptance of a particular 
 form of Church polity? Their sense of unity was not 
 the result of a polity, but their polity, when it de- 
 veloped, was the expression of their unity. What 
 then held them together? Love for their risen 
 Lord! Each bound to the Christ, they were bound 
 to one another. Each conscious of his indwelling 
 life, they were united in the enjoyment of a com- 
 mon experience. There were differences within that 
 little company that were most divisive: differences, 
 of temperament, as between John and Peter; here, 
 too, was Simon the zealot, an insurgent against the 
 Roman government on account of the imposition 
 of the taxes, and Matthew the publican, a collector 
 of those taxes. Yet in Christ they were united. 
 It was first a union of spirit and experience, and it 
 resulted in a formal and organic unity in work and 
 in worship. 
 
 Mere oneness is not sufficient: it must be one- 
 ness in Christ — “as thou. Father, art in me, and 
 I in thee; that they also may be in us.” That 
 has been the essence of true catholicity from the 
 beginning. “We first meet the word catholic,” says 
 Professor Briggs, “in the epistle of Ignatius, the 
 Bishop of Antioch, to the church at Smyrna early 
 in the second century, in the sentence, ‘Whereso- 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 259 
 
 ever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be; 
 even as where Jesus may be, there is the catholic 
 Church.’ The catholic Church is the Church gath- 
 ered about Jesus as its head, just as the church at 
 Smyrna was gathered about its bishop. The cath- 
 olic Church is thus the universal Church as dis- 
 tinguished from the local church, the Church 
 throughout the whole world, under Jesus Christ, 
 the bishop of all.”^ The achievement of unity 
 upon a basis short of this: a visible, organic unity 
 cemented by anything other than a common loyalty 
 to “Jesus Christ, the bishop of all,” while it might 
 seem to promise a vast increase of efficiency and 
 power, would prove to be the undoing of the Church. 
 
 It is in this direction that Christendom must look 
 for the basis of the unity for whieh it prays. Creed 
 must be reduced to the irreducible minimum as a 
 requirement for membership in the universal 
 Church. Says Professor Denney in his Jesus and 
 the Gospel, “The symbol of the Church’s unity might 
 be expressed thus: T believe in God, through 
 Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord and Saviour.’ ” 
 Is more than this needed? The widest liberty of 
 conviction as to the validity of Church polities must 
 be accorded. Said Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of 
 Worcester in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 “For the Church to require more than Christ him- 
 
 * Church Unity, p. 47. 
 
260 
 
 THE UNION OF CHKISTIAN FORCES 
 
 self did, or make the condition of her communion 
 more than our Saviour did of discipleship, is wholly 
 unwarranted.” Wise words, and as true as when 
 first spoken. To go “back to Christ” is to go for- 
 ward. Folly and mistake began when the Church 
 forsook its Lord, and betook itself to the ordinances 
 of man. Disunion began when the Church over- 
 took its Master and sought to pass him by. But 
 to-day the Christ still leads his Church, and from a 
 position far in advance of it beckons it forward, and 
 calls upon it to renew its allegiance to the simplicity 
 of the gospel. 
 
 “We faintly hear, we dimly see. 
 
 In differing phrase we pray; 
 
 But dim or clear, we own in Thee 
 The Light, the Truth, the Way.” 
 
 The Church has much to forget before it can at- 
 tain unto the unity of the faith: it has also much to 
 remember. The sovereign cure for the evils of dis- 
 union into which Christianity has fallen is a purer 
 and simpler Christianity. The Christ who prayed 
 for the unity of his Church alone can effect it; but 
 he must be given the leadership of it. As mutual 
 love of parents and children holds the home to- 
 gether, in spite of differences of belief and tempera- 
 ment among the children, so love for one another 
 and for their Lord must hold together Christians 
 
THE BASIS OF ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 261 
 
 of every name, if they are ever to be held together. 
 For this there is no substitute in schemes of Church 
 unity, whether federal or organic. When love of 
 the Lord which draws them together is strong 
 enough to overcome their affection for the “petted 
 notions, fondled theologies, and idolized ceremonials” 
 which separate them, nothing can keep them apart: 
 they wdll come together and find a way of reconciling 
 their differences, or labor and pray in a united 
 Church in spite of them. William Denny very 
 truly says, “There are problems in the spiritual and 
 social world which are like some of our metals, alto- 
 gether refractory to low temperatures. They will 
 only melt with great heat, and there is no other way 
 of melting them.” When Christians desire it 
 earnestly enough, desire it more than they desire a 
 hundred and one other things which are incompat- 
 ible with it, desire it passionately, the lost secret 
 of Christian unity will be discovered again, and the 
 prayer of the Lord of the Church that his disciples 
 may be one will be fulfilled. 
 
INDEX 
 
 America, racial and economic 
 problems of, 161 
 American Institute of Social 
 Service, 155 
 
 American Sunday-School Un- 
 ion, 166, 220 
 
 Apostolic Age, Church in the, 
 45, 48 
 
 Apostolic Age, The, referred to, 
 46 
 
 Apostolic Succession and Chris- 
 tian unity, 241 
 
 Barbauld, Mrs. Letitia, quoted, 
 92 
 
 Bible, modern view of, 87 
 Revised Version of, 91 
 Brent, Bishop Chas. H., pro- 
 posal of, 223 
 
 Briggs, Prof. C. A., quoted, 
 254, 258 
 
 British and Foreign Bible 
 Society, 220 
 
 Brooks, Phillips, quoted, 192 
 Brotherhood of Christian Un- 
 ity, 220 
 
 Brown, Dr. Arthur J., quoted, 
 190, 204 
 
 Bruce, Prof. A. B., quoted, 76 
 
 Calixtus, George, quoted, 217 
 Calvin, John, quoted, 217 
 Carroll, Rev. Henry K., Asso. 
 Sec’y of the Federal Council 
 of Churches of Christ in 
 America, 15, 106 
 Catholicity, cost of, 61, 239 
 Charity, its universal quality, 
 92 
 
 Chicago Council of City Mis- 
 sions, work of, 117 
 Chicago-Lambeth Proposal, 81, 
 220 
 
 text of, 241 
 
 China, Conferences in, 198 
 China National Convention, 84 
 Christian Education, a field for 
 united action, 119 
 Christianity, strongest argu- 
 ment for, 44 
 
 Church History, value of, 85 
 Church Polity, development of 
 the Roman form, 51 
 early forms of, 48 
 City, problems of the, 164 
 
 religious needs of the, 113 
 Clarke, James Freeman, quo- 
 ted, 92 
 
 Collectivism, the modern 
 growth of, 66 
 
 Commission on Country Life, 
 125 
 
 Commission on Social Service, 
 text of program of, 107 
 Commissions on Home and 
 Foreign Missions, work of, 
 109 
 
 Conflict of Religions in the 
 Early Roman Empire, quo- 
 ted, 49 
 
 Conservatives and Liberals, 72 
 Constructive Quarterly, estab- 
 lishment of, 232 
 quoted, 225 
 
 Continuation Committee Con- 
 ferences, 84, 195 
 Cooperation in Service, a basis 
 for union. 93, 159 
 Council at Jerusalem, 46 
 Council of Nicea, 50 
 Country Church, problems of, 
 125, 143 
 
 Country Church, The, by Gill 
 and Pinchot, 30 
 Creeds, modern estimate of, 
 219 
 
 place of, in the early 
 Church, 257 
 
 263 
 
INDEX 
 
 Denney, Prof. James, quoted, 
 259 
 
 Denny, William, quoted, 261 
 Denominational differences, 22, 
 69 
 
 misunderstandings, 83 
 Denominations, claims of, 64 
 persistence of, 239 
 present number of, 16 
 rise of, 63 
 
 strength of various bodies 
 of, 25 
 
 their right to be, 214 
 Department of Church and 
 Country Life, Surveys of, 28 
 Department of Commerce and 
 Labor, Bulletin quoted, 17 
 Development, dangers attend- 
 ant upon, 63 
 
 “Dissidenoe of dissent,” 53, 65 
 Divisions, cost of, 20, 24, 34, 55 
 Dollinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz 
 von, quoted, 255 
 
 Ecob, Dr. James H., quoted, 14 
 Edinburgh Missionary Con- 
 ference, 208 
 
 Evangelical Alliance, 220 
 
 Federal Council of Churches of 
 Christ in America, 104, 220 
 Federation, various forms of 
 described, 140 
 
 Foreign population, missionary 
 labors among the, 116 
 Fremantle, Canon William 
 Henry, 247 
 
 Harnack, Prof. Adolph, quoted, 
 216 
 
 Herrmann, Prof. Wilhelm, 
 quoted, 89 
 Hill, Rowland, 70 
 Hoar, Hon. Geo. F., quoted, 
 165 
 
 “Holy Catholic Church,” 90 
 Holy Spirit, the, 89 
 Home Missions Council, pro- 
 gram of, 168 
 
 Horizontal Divisions in the 
 Church, 72 
 
 Hymns, a bond of unity be- 
 tween different denomina- 
 tions, 91 
 
 Immigration, problems of, 115 
 India National Conference, 
 minute of, 195 
 
 Individualism, era of passing, 
 66 
 
 In Praise of Legend, quoted, 23 
 Interdenominational Commis- 
 sion of Maine, 153 
 Commission of Utah, 178 
 
 Japan, rapid development of, 
 73 
 
 Jesus and the Gospel, quoted, 
 259 
 
 Jesus, his prayer for the unity 
 of has followers, 56, 239, 
 258 
 
 the method of, 40 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, quoted, 99 
 Kriloff, Ivan, poem by, 83 
 
 Gibbons, Cardinal James, 
 quoted, 224 
 
 Gill, C. O., on The Country 
 Church, 30 
 
 Gladstone, Wm. E., quoted, 78 
 Glover, Prof. T. R., quoted, 49 
 Good Samaritan, reference to 
 parable of, 68 
 Grotius, Hugo, 217 
 Guild, Rev. Roy B., Ill 
 Gulick, Prof. Sidney L., visit 
 to Japan, 110 
 
 264 
 
 Lahore Conference, 250 
 Laymen’s Missionary Move- 
 ment, 207 
 
 League of Catholic Unity, 220 
 Leibniz, G. W., 217 
 Liberals and Conservatives, 72 
 Liberty, religious, 53 
 Livingstone, David, quoted, 95 
 Locke, John, 217 
 Lodge, Sir Oliver, quoted, 63 
 London Missionary Society, 
 192 
 
INDEX 
 
 Love, the great essential in 
 Christian unity, 96, 121, 258 
 
 McFarland, Rev. Charles S., 
 Sec’y of the Federal Council 
 of Churches of Christ in 
 America, 106 
 McGiffert, A. C., 46 
 Maine, Interdenominational 
 Commission of, 153 
 Massachusetts Federation of 
 Churches, statistics collected 
 by, 131 
 
 Mathews, Dr. Shailer, visit to 
 Japan, 110 
 quoted, 214 
 
 May, Margaret, poem by, 
 quoted, 234 
 Medical Missions, 205 
 Melanchthon, Philip, 217 
 Milligan, William, quoted, 187 
 Milton, John, 217 
 Ministerial Orders, validity of, 
 18, 244, 247 
 
 Missouri, survey of, 145 
 Mormonism, 164, 166 
 Mott, Dr. John R., quoted, 55, 
 192 
 
 “Neglected Field Survey, The,” 
 172 .. 
 
 Nelson, Admiral Horatio, in- 
 cident of, 77 
 
 Ohio, survey of, 135 
 Oregon, church at Freewater, 
 146 
 
 Overchurching, 27 
 “Overlooking” as opposed to 
 Overchurching, 118, 172 
 Owen, John, quoted, 82 
 
 Parkhurst, Dr. Charles H., 
 quoted, 62 
 
 Paul, his counsel to the Ephe- 
 sians, 104 
 
 his view of Christian 
 unity, 46 
 
 Peter’s confession of Christ, 257 
 
 Pinchot, Gifford, on The 
 Country Church, 30 
 Platon, Archbishop, quoted, 
 226 
 
 Platt, Dr. Ward, quoted, 174 
 Polity as a factor in Christian 
 unity, 243 
 
 Pools in the Sand, poem by 
 Margaret May, 234 
 Population, church member- 
 ship in proportion to, 27 
 growth of urban, 164 
 Pragmatism, 219 
 Prejudice, the waning of, 64, 
 218 
 
 Reformation, reference to, 52 
 Prof. Briggs’ estimate of 
 the, 254 
 
 Religion and Theology, 121, 
 251 
 
 Renaissance, 52 
 Roman Church, development 
 of its polity, 51 
 organization inviolable,224 
 Romans, religious tolerance of 
 the, 62 
 
 Root, Rev. E. Tallmadge, 
 quoted, 26, 132 
 
 Rural Church, see Country 
 Church. 
 
 Ruskin, John, quoted, 71 
 
 Sacerdotalism, 245 
 Salaries of ministers, 31 
 Schaff, Dr. Philip, quoted, 50 
 Scholarship, development of 
 modern, 86 
 
 Service, a basis for union, 93, 159 
 Shakespeare, Rev. J. H., pro- 
 posal of, 231 
 
 Simms,|Rev. F. Marion, quoted, 
 26 
 
 Smith, Prof. Goldwin, quoted, 
 233 
 
 Smyth, Dr. Newman, quoted, 
 215 
 
 Social Service, Commission of, 
 text of program, 107 
 Speneer, Herbert, referred to, 
 99 
 
 265 
 
INDEX 
 
 Stillingfleet, Bishop Edward, 
 quoted, 259 
 
 Strong, Dr. Frank, quoted, 213 
 Strong, Rev. Josiah, quoted, 
 155 
 
 Sunday and Adult School 
 Union, 220 
 
 Surveys of Department of 
 Church and Country Life, 28 
 
 Talmud, legends from the, 84, 
 98 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 217 
 
 Theological students, catho- 
 licity of, 74 
 
 Theology and Religion, 121, 251 
 
 The Swan, the Crayfish, and the 
 Pike, poem by Ivan Kriloff, 
 83 
 
 Toleration sometimes a form of 
 indifference, 64 
 
 Tomlinson, Rev. E. T., quoted, 
 27 
 
 Tompkins County, N. Y., 
 church statistics of, 30, 138 
 
 Unity, cost of, 61 
 
 demand for, on the foreign 
 field, 186 
 
 instances of what is being 
 accomplished, 227 
 in theory and practice, 103 
 of the first disciples, 257 
 widespread desire for, 39 
 
 UtahlnterdenominationalCom- 
 mission, 178 
 
 Vermont Plan of Church Fed- 
 eration described, 142 
 
 Wesley, John, 217 
 
 West China Missions Advisory 
 Board, 203 
 
 Western States, religious sur- 
 vey of, 172 
 
 What Must the Church Do to Be 
 Saved? quoted, 26 
 
 Williams, Roger, 53 
 
 Wilson, Warren H., on the 
 Country Church, 129 
 
 Zwingli, Ulrich, 217 
 
 266 
 
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