El I * • m ■ P H 924 She ©oUtraftta 'Stwttfjcvsitjj tw lite ©its of IJjew Uovl! GIVEN BY j.iyi.c^ieii. CHURCH UNITY //f 5 CHURCH UNITY jfttoe Lectures DELIVERED IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK, DURING THE WINTER OF 1896 BY CHARLES W. SHIELDS, D.D., LL.D. E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, LL.D. JOHN F. HURST, D.D., LL.D. HENRY C. POTTER, D.D., LL.D. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D. % NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1896 Copyright, 1S96, By Charles Scribner's Sons. ©fotasitg ]$tm: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. PREFACE THROUGH the kind provision of a Director of the Union Theological Seminary, five leading divines, representing five great evangelical churches, lectured in the Union Theological Seminary, during the winter of 1896, on the several topics of Church Unity assigned them. These lectures were so able, so timely, and so valuable, that it was deemed wise to publish them. They are printed just as delivered, with the exception of slight corrections and additions. The order was changed in a single instance, that the themes might be printed in a better chronological series. The lecturers were entirely free to express their own opinions upon the topics assigned them. Each author is exclusively respon- vi PREFACE sible for his own lecture. The concord of opinion of these five representative divines with regard to Church Unity is quite remark- able. This concord expresses the spirit and attitude of the Union Theological Seminary. CONTENTS i Page The General Principles of CnuRcn Unity 3 By the Rev. Charles W. Shields, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the College of New Jersey, Prince- ton, New Jersey. II TnE Sin of Schism 69 By the Rev. E. Benjamin Andrews, LL.D., President of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Ill The Irenic Movements since the Ref- ormation 107 By the Rev. John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Washing- ton, D.C Viii CONTENTS IV Page The Ciiicago-Lambetii Articles . . . 157 By the Right Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., L.L.D., Bishop of New York. V The Unity of tiie Spirit — a World- wide Necessity 199 By the Rev. Amory II. Bradford, D.D., Pas- tor of Congregational Church, Montclair, New Jersey. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH UNITY Br the Rrcv. CHARLES W. SHIELDS, D.D.,LL.D. Professor in the College of New Jersey, Princeton, New Jersey THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH UNITY THE cause of Church Unity still lives. Some of our denominational jour- nals may seem to have been burying it with military honors, — But burying it only in enigy. It rises again before us, not as a spectre from the grave, but as the queen of the heavenly graces, with a train of reverend and learned advocates. It has long had its enthusiastic friends who were discreetly praised as amiable visionaries ; now, apparently, it has some alarmed foes, who have betrayed no lan- guid interest in the " iridescent dream- ers." And so it takes its place among the living issues of the day. THE CHURCH UNITY MOVEMENT Is any issue more living ? He must be blind indeed who does not see that the movement for church unity has become 4 CIIURCIl UNITY the characteristic movement of modern Christendom. Other questions, matters of doctrine or policy, may agitate certain portions of the Church here and there; but this is the one question which moves the whole Church everywhere, in both hemispheres. There is no corner of the Christian world, no outpost of Christian missions, to which it has not penetrated ; and no grade of the Christian ministry, from the Pope himself down to the hum- blest evangelist, that has not voiced its claims. The Roman Church has been proposing terms of unity to the Greek Church, on the one hand, and to the An- glican Church on the other; the Angli- can Church has been proposing terms to the other reformed churches; and all churches in the United States have been proposing terms to one another. Not only have kindred churches, long estranged, been reuniting, — Congregational with Congregational, Presbyterian with Presby- terian, Episcopal with Episcopal ; not only have groups of such churches been forming international alliances, — Pan-Anglican, Pan-Presbyterian, Pan-Congregationalist, Pan-Methodist; but ready champions of GENERAL PRINCIPLES 5 such groups of churches, in truly ecu- menical conferences, as at Cologne, Bonn, and Griinwald, have been approaching the problem of unity from the most diverse positions. Meanwhile, too, the great Christian heart of the age has been pray- ing and hoping, as never before, that Christ's own prayer for oneness might be fulfilled. EXPLANATIONS OF THE MOVEMENT A movement so universal and deep- seated as this cannot be regarded as any mere accidental outburst or religious fash- ion of the time. The student of church history sees in it only an age-spirit which has been born of the ages. It appears to him in this light from various points of view. According to one view, ingenious but fanciful, the trend toward unity is but the issue of great Christian tendencies which from the first were typified by the three chief apostles as their representa- tives. The legal spirit of Peter and the evangelical spirit of Paul are to be har- monized by the loving spirit of John. As in the early Church the Petrine type of Jewish Christianity was opposed by the 6 CUURCH UNITY Pauline type of Gentile Christianity, so in the later Church Catholicism has fol- lowed St. Peter until it denied his Lord in the papacy ; while Protestantism, like St. Paul, has blamed and withstood it until freedom has become license. And now in the modern Church, Protestantism and Catholicism are to be reconciled under the gentle spirit of St. John, the beloved apostle, still tarrying till his Lord shall come. The reunited Church, like the bride in the Apocalypse, will then be pre- pared and adorned for her husband. According to another and profounder view, the problem of church unity has simply come last in the logical evolution of Christian doctrine. To each age of Christianity has been given its own pro- blems, to be solved and then left as pre- mises to succeeding ages. The age of the Greek fathers was occupied with the prob- lems of theology, strictly so called, and settled for all time the doctrines of the trinity, creation and incarnation. The next following age of the Latin fathers was devoted to the problems of anthropol- ogy, and denned the doctrines of original sin, electing grace, regeneration. Then GENERAL riUNCirLES 7 came the age of the reformers, with the problems of soteriology, and new dog- matic definitions of the atonement, justi- fication, and sanctification. At last we have reached an age of irenic thought, which must take up the problems of ecclesiology and discuss the doctrines of the Church, the ministry, and the sacra- ments. In the settlement of such ques- tions the unity of the Church, as based upon a doctrinal consensus of the Christ- ian ages, would appear as that last pro- blem of problems, by the solution of which the circle of Christian doctrine is to be completed. According to another and more philo- sophical view, the present impulse to church unity is but a natural and healthy reaction from former impulses to church division. It illustrates that great historic law of re-/ currences, by which whole generations: after having been driven toward one ex-\ treme will rebound toward the other, until they settle down to a just medium. For some centuries past the divisive impulse has been working with frightful mo- mentum. In the ninth century the West- ern Church broke away from the Eastern 8 CHURCII UNITY Church. In the sixteenth century the re- formed Churches broke away from the Roman church; and for three centuries since then they have gone on reforming the Reformation, protesting against Pro- testantism, purifying Puritanism, dissent- ing from dissent, dividing, redivicling and sub-dividing down to the inorganic dust of individuality itself. The absurd result has been reached that every Christian man may do without the Church, or any chance meeting of Christian men may manufac- ture the Church anew, in ignorance of all the Christian centuries before them and in contempt of all Christendom around them. At length, however, from these wild extremes the inevitable reaction has set in during the present century, at first faint and feeble but gathering strength and volume in its course. The general recoil of modern towards primitive Chris- tianity has been followed by that of Pro- testantism toward Catholicity, Puritanism towards Ecclesiasticism, dissent towards consent. American Christianity, hitherto so unhistoric, is beginning to see that something is due to the wisdom of the Christian a^es and the consent of Chris- GENERAL PRINCIPLES \3 tian nations. As different thinkers vari- ously express it, "the centrifugal age of Christianity is closed ; The centripetal ac- tion has begun." 1 " The age of division is over: that of reunion is coming on." Thus viewed, the movement for church unity is but a recoil from the sectarian results of the Reformation under the great historic law of action and reaction, cause and effect. Still another and the most practical view is, that the unification of the Church has become necessary by its critical position in modern civilization. Christianity has ever been more or less involved in the civiliza- tion which has accompanied it as part of its own historic development. In the primitive age it encountered a Pagan civili- zation, whose art, philosophy, and politic were hostile to its lofty claims. In the middle ages, it had Christianized and con- quered this pagan civilization, rendering its philosophy a handmaid to divinity, resolving its art into a stately ritual, and subjecting even the State to the Church. But now, in the present reforming age, it finds itself divorced, falsely and tempo- 1 Rev. Prof. George P. Fisher, DD. 10 CHURCH UNITY rarily, from the very civilization to which it has itself given birth ; surrounded by a sceptical philosophy, a licentious art, and a politic wholly of the earth earthy. Not only thus surrounded by agnosticism, im- morality, anarchism; but internally rent and torn with sectarianism, rationalism, formalism. Never before was there such need of an organic consolidation of the conservative forces of Chistianity. Never before was there such need of an organic compact of its aggressive forces. Never before was there such need of presenting a united Church to heathenism abroad and to irreligion at home. In this light unity appears simply indispensable to the Church to enable it to accomplish its final earthly mission as a teacher, conservator, and re- generator of human society. These are some explanations of the unity movement. There is truth in each of them. All of them may be combined con- sistently. We may view the movement as \ at once a reconciliation of Christian tern- \ peraments, a completion of Christian doc- \ trine, a reaction from the sectarian results | of the Reformation, and a necessity of Chistian civilization; or we may attempt GENERAL PRINCIPLES 11 no explanation, and accept it simply as an inscrutable Providence, — the fact remains, that it is the supreme question of our Christian epoch. Before discussing (he general principles of Church unity, we need to define the sense in which the words are to be used. It is not now proposed to speak of the Church as invisible and unorganized ; nor of a unity that is sentimental and ideal ; but of the visible organized Church and of a visible organic unity. Never, indeed, should we forget or depreciate that glorious invisible Church or communion of saints which includes all true believers in Christ that are, or have been, or shall be united to Him, whether in heaven or upon earth. Much less may we set forth as opposed or superior to the one invisible Church that other visible Church which is now so divided, distracted, and even dismembered. Rather must we discern a fixed normal relation of the one to the other, and ever aim, as far as in us lies, to make the visible Church a true expression of the invisible Church, in its unity as well as in its other divine qualities. This view of church unity as organic may be vindicated on several grounds. 12 CHURCH UNITY ORGANIC UNITY INTENDED BY OUR LORD In the first place, organic unity was con- templated by our Lord himself as head of the Church. Although he was pre-emi- nently a teacher, he was also an organizer. He instituted a church as well as pro- claimed a gospel. And he gave to that church apostles, sacraments, scriptures, doctrines, all of which are strictly ecclesi- astical elements, appertaining only to a Church visible. As far as was practicable during his own lifetime, he thus organized his spiritual kingdom ; and after ascending into heaven he completed the organization, by conferring upon it apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and doctors, for the edifying of his body in the unity of his faith and of his knowledge. This was the one visible Church as organized by Christ himself ; and it is inconceivable, that he ever intended it should he broken into jarring sects, calling themselves His Church, excommunicating one another, denying each other's ministry and sacra- ments and having no more inter-communion than the Jews and Samaritans. To imagine Him, in his last great intercession on the GENERAL PRINCIPLES 13 night of his betrayal, praying for a mere invisible unity as consistent with visible schism and conflict, would make that solemn utterance either a truism or an al>- surdity. Most distinctly He prayed, not only that the oneness of all believers might be as essential as that between the Father and himself, but that it might be mani- fested as demonstrative proof of his earthly mission, — "that the world may know that thou hast sent me." And not until all sectarianism has disappeared from His visible organized Church w r ill the prayer be fulfilled. ORGANIC UNITY TAUGHT BY THE APOSTLES In the second place, organic unity was also inculcated by the apostles as founders of the Church. By their official acts they proceeded to give it the ecclesiastical equipment of ministry, sacrament, scrip- ture, and doctrine, and in their Epistles they ever rebuked divisions as schisms and magnified organic unity as essential in the visible Church of Christ. Ecclesiastical diversities, much less extreme than those now known as Congregationalist, Presby- 14 CHURCH UNITY terian, and Episcopalian, were characterized as the wildest hallucination, a mere deli- rious dream of the members of a diseased body saying one to another, "I have no need of thee." Doctrinal distinctions, made by teachers much less known than Luther, Calvin, or Wesley, met with the stern rebuke, " Is Christ divided ? Were ye baptised into the name of Paul?" Ritual usages, much more menacing than those which now separate Baptist and Pedobaptist, Evangelist and Sacerdotalist, were settled by the apostles and elders in the first Council of Jerusalem without the unchristian results of schism and sectari- anism. And this organic unity of the Apostolic Church was maintained unbroken for centuries afterwards, — at least until the Council of Nice. ORGANIC UNITY MAINTAINED BY THE REFORMERS In the third place, this organic unity was never repudiated by the Protestants or Reformers of later time. As those words imply, had it been possible, they would have remained in the Roman Church, simply protesting against its errors and GENERAL rill NCI PL EB 15 reforming its abuses. They had no thought of destroying Catholic unity. Luther distinguished between Popery and that true ancient Roman Church of the early fathers, from which he never con- sidered himself separated. MelanchthoD even injured his fame by his efforts to retain Lutheranism under the papacy and in harmony with Calvinism. Calvin not only claimed agreement with the true ancient Church of Cluysostom and Basil, of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine ; but formulated a consensus of the reformed churches ; and when Archbishop Cranmer proposed a general council for defining the principles of Church unity, declared he would have crossed ten seas rather than miss that Lambeth Conference. Moreover, during the first century after the Reforma- tion all the reformed churches, including the Church of England, sat together in the same synods, interchanged pulpits and pro- fessors' chairs, and recognized the validity of each others' ministry and sacraments. It would seem inconsistent with historic truth and good scholarship for their Ameri- can descendants now to call any of these branches of the Catholic Church " sects " or 16 CHURCH UNITY "schisms," however fitly the terms may be applied to some Christian bodies of later date. In law and courtesy they are en- titled " churches,' ' as in the preface of the Prayer-book ; and we shall never get before us all the data of the Church unity problem until we have studied afresh the organic connection of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Reformed Dutch and German Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church, with the whole visible Catholic Church of Clnist and his apostles. OEGANIC UXITY ATTAINABLE In the fourth place, such organic unity is the only kind of Church unity which is prac- ticable or directly attainable by our efforts. The invisible Church unity, of winch we have spoken, is a divinely constituted rela- tionship of believers in Christ, which we can neither create nor destroy, but only express and maintain. Seen by the eye of God alone, but for the visible Church such unity would be to us invisible indeed. In this world, at least, there could be no com- munion of saints without ecclesiastical organization. The unity of the spirit GENERAL PRINCIPLES 17 would be a mere sentiment or notion, if even conceivable. It is in the sphere of organic unity that our duty and privilege lie. And there we may attempt little or much. Indeed, we shall attempt nothing at all if we simply accept the present condition of the visible Church as normal, necessary, and perpetual. We shall only continue to exhibit the mystical body of Christ to the world as seemingly mutilated or deliriously dismembered. Nor shall we attempt very much more, if we are content to give the invisible unity, our common Christian oneness, merely some faint and transient expression, as in united missions, united charities, evangelical alliances, and denominational leagues and federations for social, civic, and national reform. Too much cannot be said in praise of such Christian associations, when viewed as to their own beneficent aims and results. But after all that may be said, it still re- mains to be said, it is not their distinctive mission to promote church unity. They may even obscure and thwart such unity, if put in place of Scripture ideals and pre- cepts and allowed to exhaust the Christian instinct and effort toward oneness. 2 18 CHURCIl UNITY Speaking now simply to the point, I have little faith in any occasional schemes or forms of Christian union which do not both aim and tend to become organic, ec- clesiastical, historic, apostolical, and scrip- tural. Nor do I find myself turned from this view by the popular objections which we hear on all sides : " Denominational- ism is itself a great blessing ; " " Chris- tians will have to become much better than they are now ; " " Church unity is a thing of the millennium." On the con- trary, as I have tried to show on former occasions, all that is good in denomina- tionalism would be consistent with a true church unity, and without it simply tends to sectarianism. With all their faults, the Christians of our day, as Christians go in this evil world, are no worse than those who have gone before us or are likely to come after us. Nor have we a right to devolve our duty upon an unknown pos- terity in the millennium, whenever that may come. The true chasers of the rain- bow are those strict denominationalists who would paint upon the dark cloud of our unhappy divisions the "iridescent dream" of some ideal church of the fu- GENERAL PRINCIPLES 19 ture, which is so remote and vague that we can never reach it until we have all become transfigured into saints and angels. If we will only begin with Christians as they are and churches and denominations as we find them, and inquire how to ren- der them one united Church, we shall at least be dealing with the facts of the sit- uation. It follows now from these definitions that the principles of church unity must consist of fixed ecclesiastical tenets and institutes rather than mere abstract pro- positions, sentimental professions, or occa- sional co-operations. As yet, the only scheme of such principles which has en- tered the field and still keeps the field, is known as the Quadrilateral, or Four Lam- beth Principles. A word is needed as to its history. HISTORY OF THE QUADRILATERAL To the Protestant Episcopal Church be- longs the honor — an honor which can never be taken away from her — of hav- ing first enunciated in our day any general principles of church unity. Perhaps it was but natural and right that the rally- 20 CHURCH UNITY ing call should come from a denomination so churchly in its aim and spirit and so fitted by its historic antecedents to lead the other American denominations to- ward Catholicity. Certain it is that within this communion, almost from its origin, the question has been under lively discussion. The patriarchal Bishop White, after the Revolution, not only gave the Episcopalian body a Presbyterian consti- tution of the vertebrate type, but also favored organic connection with the Mo- ravian, Methodist, and Lutheran commun- ions. The prophetical Bishop Seabury, at the same time, though he founded a differ- ent school of churchmanship, named as the four fixed marks of the Church, — government, sacrament, faith, and doctrine, which are very suggestive of the Lam- beth postulates. 1 But it was reserved for the saintly and beloved Muhlenberg, combining both schools in himself as "an Evangelical Catholic,'* to give the whole movement voice and potency. In the famous Memorial of 1853, composed by him and addressed to the bishops, the 1 History of the Prot. Episc. Church, by Archdeacon Charles C. Tiffany, DD., p. 557, 562. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 21 query was raised, whether the Protestant Episcopal Church, with only her present canonical means and appliances, her fixed and invariable modes of worship, and her traditional customs and usages, is compe- tent to the work of preaching and dispens- ing the gospel to all sorts and conditions of men in this land and in this age : and whether her mission might not be more fully accomplished by the extension of Episcopal ordination to " men in other Christian bodies, who would gladly receive it could they obtain it without that entire surrender of all the liberty in public wor- sliip to which they have been accustomed, — men who are sound in the faith and having the gift of preachers and pastors would be able ministers of the New Tes- tament." It was further urged by the Memorialists, that to the Catholic episco- pate belongs the high privilege of becom- ing the central bond of church unity in Protestant Christendom, and that it may be the special work of an American epis- copate to attempt some " broader and more comprehensive ecclesiastical system, sur- rounding and including the Protestant Episcopal Church as it is now, leaving 22 chub en cxity that church, untouched, identical with that church in all its great principles, yet providing for as much freedom in opinion, discipline, and worship as is compatible with the essential faith and order of the Gospel." This noble project was so novel and startlin£ at that time, fortv vears a^o, that it does not seem even to have been fully comprehended. Its temporary fail- ure was followed, as might have been foreseen, by the rise of the ritualistic party and the secession of the Reformed Episcopal Church. But its good effects have remained in the appointment of a permanent Episcopal Commission on Church Unity, in a revision of the Prayer- Book, enriching it and making it more flexible, and in the Declaration concern- ing Unity by the General Convention of 1886, at Chicago. THE CHICAGO ARTICLES OF TNITY The Chicago Declaration was issued in response to a memorial signed by more than eleven hundred clergymen, including thirty-two bishops, and by over three thou- sand laymen. It is understood to have been elaborated in purport and language GESERAL PRINCIPLES 23 by Bishop Littlejohn, of Long Island, chairman of the Episcopal Commission. 1 In the preamble, after referring to the Muhlenberg Memorial, the bishops de- clared: (1) their earnest desire that the Saviour's prayer for unity may be speedily fulfilled; (2) their belief that all duly bap- tised persons are members of the Holy Catholic Church; (3) their readiness to forego all things of mere human ordering as to modes of worship and discipline or traditional customs ; and (4) their disavowal of any wish to absorb other Christian com- munions into their own church, but only co-operate with such communions on the \ basis of a common faith and order, to dis- ; countenance schism and heal the wonndsin the body of Christ At ffifi same Sme, the ^bishops affirmTffiS the unity sought can only be obtained by a return of all Chris- tian communions to its first principles as exemplified by the primitive, undivided i The Rev. Dr. Huntington, of Grace Church, in his •Ewy towards Unity," also foreshadowed some of its essential statements, and gave to the four articles the name of "Quadrilateral." by which thev have become known "These four points, like the four famous for- tresses of Lombards, make the ' Quadrilateral ' of pure Anglicanism." — p. 157. 24 CHURCH UNITY Church, and entrusted as a sacred deposit of faith and order by Christ and his apos- tles to the Church through all time, and therefore as incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the com- mon and equal benefit of all men. And then the bishops set forth four such prin- ciples of church unity. First. The Holy Scriptures, as the revealed word of God. Second. The Nicene Creed, as the es- sential faith. Third. The two Sacraments, as insti- tuted by Christ. Fourth. The Historic Episcopate, as locally adapted to different Christian nations. The bishops concluded with an expres- sion of their readiness for brotherly con- ference with any Christian bodies seeking the restoration of the organic unity of the Church with a view to the earnest study of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing might happily be brought to pass. This is substantially the whole purport of the Chicago Declaration. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 25 THE LAMBETH ARTICLES OF UNITY The next stage in the history is to be traced in the proceedings of the last Pan- Anglican Conference, convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace in 1888. It appears that for more than thirty years a movement like that on this side of the ocean had been gaining strength and clearness in the convocations both of Canterbury and York, as well as in the colonial synods of Canada and Aus- tralia ; and by the time it came before the assembled bishops it had pervaded the whole Anglican communion throughout the world. The result of their delibera- tions was the adoption of the four American articles with two slight amendments. In the first article the Holy Scriptures are not characterized simply "as the revealed Word of God," but more precisely "as containing all things necessary to salvation and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith." In the second article "the Apostles' Creed, as the baptismal symbol," was added to "the Mcene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith." There were, however, some significant 26 CnURCII UNITY changes in the preamble and supplement of the American Declaration. The entire preamble was omitted. Consequently, the Four Principles are no longer offered to other communions " as inherent parts of a sacred deposit of faith and order incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees." To some persons this may seem a very important omission. For one, I do not think much would be gained or lost to either party by retaining it. But inas- much as the prelatic claim of trusteeship is not generally admitted, it may be well to have the terms of unity as much freed from debatable matter as possible. In place of the discarded preamble, the Quad- rilateral is presented simply as supplying " a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made toward Home- reunion" — a phrase explained elsewhere as affording " a basis for a United Church, including at least the chief Christian com- munions of our people," — "with large freedom of variation on secondary points of doctrine, worship, and discipline." 1 The supplement of the American Decla- 1 Lambeth Conferences of 1833, pp. 280, 333-335. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 27 ration was also modified. Instead of refer- ring to other churches somewhat vaguely as " Christian bodies," the Conference definitely characterizes them as having "standards of doctrine, worship, and gov- ernment ; " expresses the belief that " even in respect of Church government" a basis of agreement may be found with non-con- forming communions ; announces a readi- ness for brotherly conference with them, « in order to consider what steps can be taken, either toward corporate reunion, or toward such relations as may prepare the way for fuller organic unity hereafter;" and finally, with a view to this end, recom- mends a comparative study of " the stand- ards of the Anglican Church and the authoritative standards of doctrine, worship, and government adopted by the other bodies into which the English-speaking races are divided." 1 It will be seen that the logical effect ot the Pan-Anglican revision has been to detach the Lambeth principles, as they may now be called, 2 from local and denomina- 1 Lambeth Conferences, p. 281. 2 The Convention at Baltimore adopted formally the Four Principles as amended by the Lambeth Conference. 28 CnURCII UNITY national peculiarities in both the American and Anglican churches, and to plant them in the midst of all English-speaking com- munions as tenets of Catholic unity. There they stand to-day. They may be deserted by those who planted them there, and be left as a monumental folly on the high- way of time ; or they may become hence- forth the rallying standard of a reunited Christendom. Without attempting a full exposition of these principles, we need only in this lec- ture take a general view of their fitness to the ecclesiastical situation in our own country. They may be regarded as afford- ing a consensus of Catholic churches ; of Protestant churches; of Protestant with Catholic churches. THE LAMBETH CONSENSUS OF CATHOLIC CHURCHES. And first let us consider their fitness to those great historic churches, the Ortho- dox Greek and Roman Catholic* which though they have their seat in Europe, extend their jurisdiction over portions of the American people. The Greek Church, numbering some eighty-four millions in GENERAL PRINCIPLES 29 Christendom, prevails as yet only in the territory of Alaska, with a few scattered congregations in our cities ; but religious or political events may yet give it more American importance. It possesses all the Four Lambeth Principles, encumbered by dogmas and rites more or less inconsistent with them. It holds the first article, while adding the authority of tradition to that of Scripture. It holds the second article, while rejecting from the Nicene Creed the clause which teaches the double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filioque). It holds the third article, but adds to the two sacraments of our Lord the church sacraments of confirmation, penance, holy orders, extreme unction, and matrimony; administers baptism and the eucharist to mere infants, with trine immer- sion and presbyterial confirmation ; and includes in its ritual the intercession of saints, the adoration of the Virgin, and the worship of sacred pictures. It holds the fourth article, though superimposing upon the historic episcopate a patriarchate which at times has rivalled the papacy. The Roman Catholic Church, numbering two hundred and fifteen millions of Christians, 30 CIWRCIl UNITY with at least eight millions in the United States, has been growing enormously by- natural increase and immigration. It also maintains the Four Principles, but in con- nection with even more serious inconsis- tencies. To Holy Scripture it has added, not only apostolic tradition, but a papal infallibility in interpreting both Scripture and tradition. To the Nicene Creed it has added not only the Filioque, by winch it excommunicated all Eastern Christendom, but the dogmas of Trent, by which it ex- communicated the whole Protestant body. To the two sacraments it has added not only the five other church sacraments not instituted by Christ, but the doctrine of transubstantiation, the denial of the cup, masses for souls in purgatory, the invoca- tion of saints, the worship of relics, and a Mariolatry crowned with the dogma of the immaculate conception. And to the his- toric episcopate it has added not merely the Roman primacy, but the claims of a universal bishop and vicar of Christ on earth. It is plain, that the discord of Anglican with Greek and Latin Christi- anity is far greater than the concord. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 31 THE LAMBETH CONSENSUS OF PROTES- TANT CHURCHES. As we pass to the Protestant side of Christendom we find the picture reversed. The churches of the Reformation are largely in accord with the Lambeth articles. At the head is the Lutheran Church, with twenty million members in Europe and a million in America. It has retained the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith ; the two creeds, together with the Athana- sian Creed and the Augsburg Confession ; the two sacraments, with large portions of the Catholic sacramentary ; and the historic episcopate as an expedient institution in Germany, with an apostolical succession in Sweden and Moravia which is as undis- puted as the Anglican and with which the American Lutheran communion is about to reinforce its evangelical ministry. Next appear the reformed churches, Dutch, French, and German, — less numerous but more potent as yet in our American Chris- tianity. These churches retained the Scriptures as the very word of God written ; the Apostles' Creed, with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort ; and 32 CHURCH UNITY the two Sacraments, with General Confes- sion and Absolution, and a simple Pro- testant liturgy. But being precluded by their political circumstances from reform- ing the historic episcopate, they continued the historic presbyterate, enriching it with those principles of lay representation and church freedom which have since passed into the Scottish and American churches. Then comes into view the Church of England, the most numerous and powerful of the English-speaking communions, though hitherto least potent in moulding our Christian institutions. The English Church in its reformation retained the canonical Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation; the two creeds, with the Athanasian Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles ; the two sacraments, with a mixture of Catholic and Protestant formularies in its liturgy, with portions of the Roman Breviary in its daily service, and with the ceremonies of confirmation, matrimony, and burial in its ritual. But its historic episcopate being in the hands of baronial bishops, it naturally continued them as a prelatic order in the ministry, to which has since been easily attached the GENERAL PRINCIPLES 33 claim of an exclusive prelatic succession from the apostles. The corresponding American Church has acquired this Angli- can episcopate as supported by an admir- able Presbyterian house of deputies. Next we have the Church of Scotland, less beauti- ful than her queenly sister of England, but of the same lineage and the most vigorous ecclesiastical force in our Christian civiliza- tion. The Scottish Church also retained the canonical Scriptures; the Apostles' Creed, with the Westminster Confession as an expansion of the Thirty-nine Articles; and the two Sacraments connected with a Directory ensuring the unfailing use of the appointed words and elements ; its Pres- byterian associates in England having failed to establish the revised Prayer-Book. But, being less entangled with the old political hierarchy, it declared that it had been " reformed from popery, not by pre- lates, but by presbyters, as the only succes- sors left by Christ and his apostles in the Church." And this historic presbyterate, as not inconsistent with the pure historic episcopate, but antedating both the prelatic and the papal sway in Britain, and con- fessedly traceable back to the apostles' time, 3 34 CHURCH UNITY has been perpetuated by the American presbyteries with scrupulous care through all their conflicts and separations. As to the strictly post-reformation communions, such as the Congregationalist, Baptist, and Methodist churches, so dominant in our evangelical Christianity, it need only be said that, although they do not formally profess the Lambeth principles, yet they are practically agreed in the first two articles ; might find a consensus in the sacramental article by mutual tolerance; and could have their congregational, pres- byterial, and episcopal elements normally combined in the historic episcopate, as in the undivided Apostolic Church, without loss of principle or prestige. In a word, when thus harmonized, the concord of Anglican with Protestant Christianity al- most drowns the discord. PKOTESTANT AND CATHOLIC EEUKION In order to complete this survey let us now imagine Catholicism to have been re- united, and Protestantism to have been reunited, each on the Lambeth basis. The problem would then remain, to re- unite Protestantism with Catholicism on GENERAL PRINCIPLES 35 the same basis. The elements of the pro- blem are very mixed, — some favorable, some unfavorable. First among the former is the actual consent of the two sections of Christendom in the Lambeth principles. They already have at least one common rule of faith, much common catholic doctrine, two common sacraments, and a common historic ministry, whether traced from the apostles through pope, prelate, or presbyter. And from both sides some approaches have even been made to- ward reunion upon the basis of such a consensus. On the Catholic side we have had the official correspondence between the Anglican and Greek churches, through the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Patriarch of Constantinople ; the Old Catholic Reformation from within the Roman Church protesting against the papal infallibility, and along other lines approximating Protestantism; the Bonn conferences looking to a confederation of Anglican, Russian, Greek, and Old Cath- olic churches on the basis of a primitive consensus existing before the division of Christendom and largely identical with the Lambeth principles ; and finally, the 86 CHURCH UNITY Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiff, inviting all Protestants and Orthodox Greek Christians to return to the Mother of churches. PROTESTANT APPROACHES TOWARD REUNION On the other side, we have no less re- markable approaches toward reunion, — such as the Catholic revival of the last fifty years in the Church of England, and more recently in the Church of Scotland; the general Protestant reaction, as shown in all denominations by a growing obser- vance of the church year, a recovery of portions of the Catholic liturgy, and a renewed appreciation of church history and Christian antiquity. We have also an increasing association of Protestants with Catholics in many humanitarian and Christian movements. When it is added that in our own country the tAVO have been brought under social fusion within a democratic environment, already en- gendering a Catholic type of Christianity in Protestantism, and a Protestant type of intelligence and freedom in Catholi- cism, the dream of reunion will not seem GENERAL PRINCIPLES 37 purely chimerical. Influenced by the glowing vision, a great scholar even im- agined the Pope inviting "a fraternal Pan-Christian Council in Jerusalem, where the Mother Church of Christendom held the first council of reconciliation and peace. But," he adds, " whether in Jeru- salem or Rome, or (as Cardinal Wiseman thought) in Berlin, or (as some Americans think) on the banks of the Mississippi, the war between Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva, and Oxford will be fought out to a peace- ful end, when all the churches shall be throughly Christianized and all the creeds of Christendom unified in the creed of Christ." 1 THE PROBLEM OF REUNION DIFFICULT The problem, however, has other ele- ments which are not so bright and hope- ful, and may for the present turn the scale. It cannot be forgotten that the consensus of Protestant and Catholic opinion is not only greatly outweighed by the dissensus, but as yet is purely theoretical, having been expressed only in courteous corre- spondence without much substantial in- 1 Dr. Schaff's " Reunion of Christendom," p. 28. 38 CHURCH UNITY tercommunion. The Greek Church has never repealed the decrees of Constanti- nople against the Reformers. To some critics the occasional Anglican advances toward the Greek Church look like mere ecclesiastical coquetry or an adroit flank movement against the Roman Church, rather than direct attempts at true unity. The thirteen Patriarchs in their recent Encyclical have also repelled the papal advances. The Old Catholic movement was an external, not an internal, reforma- tion of the Church of Rome, and was a mere ripple compared with the Eastern schism or the Protestant revolt. The Roman Catholic Church still stands, sepa- rated by the chasm of a thousand years from the Eastern Church, and by four centuries from all the Reformed churches, meanwhile having gained more in num- bers than it had lost ; and so far from relaxing the excommunicating decrees of Trent, has reinforced them with new dog- mas, binding together its whole commun- ion as with tenfold bands of steel. At the present moment it is demonstrating its prestige through a plenipotentiary delegate in the midst of our churches. GENERAL PRINCIPLES From the Protestant side, also, the ap- proaches have been of a mixed issue, divisive as well as conciliatory. The Anglo-Catholic revival, however just and beautiful in itself, has thus far bred a harvest of reverts to Romanism, and is necessarily accompanied with an anti- papal policy not conducive to reunion. It is a jarring note even in the Chicago and Lambeth declarations. The Protes- tant reaction in other reformed churches, though inevitable and wise, is still over- charged with hatred of popery, and even meets the most patriotic advances with fresh outbursts of native Americanism. He must shut his eyes to facts who looks for a new Protestant Catholicism to be reached at a bound, as by a feat of logic or stroke of policy. That distant goal can only be approached with slow and painful steps, through alternate defeat and victory, as a conquered peace of the Church. PROTESTANT UNIFICATION A PRE-REQUISTTE My design in thus stating this great problem has not been to indulge in mere 40 CHURCH UNITY prophetic visions, whether cheerful or gloomy, but rather to open the way for two important inferences from the whole sur- vey, for which we are now ready. I can only state them without fully developing them. One of them is, that the ecclesiasti- cal unification of Protestant Christianity on the Lambeth basis must precede the general reunion of Christendom. At least, for Anglo-Saxon Christians this is the first step and condition precedent. The Greek Church is still unreformecl and over- grown with accumulated errors. The Latin Church, even more erroneous, is not only unreformed, but hostile. To indulge in wasteful attempts at unification with such communions is to begin at the end. We shall more wisely begin at the begin- ning, if we first seek unity where it is most needed and most hopefully pursued, in our own country and among our own divided churches and denominations. In com- bining them organically by means of the four ecclesiastical principles of a common rule of faith, a common creed, common sacraments, and a common ministry every- where to be recognized as legitimate, we shall heal the sectarian diseases of Protes- GENERAL PRINCIPLES 41 tantism and repair the destructive effects of tlif Reformation. We shall secure at once a sounder Protestantism and a more constructive reformation, and so recover all that is best in Catholic Christianity while retaining all that is best in Protestant culture. And then, too, we shall have the vantage ground for influencing the older communions; in no hostile manner, but externally, by surrounding them, especially in this country, with the organized Christian intelligence of the age ; and internally, by combining with any fresh Protestantism and new reformation within their own pale. It is mainly, if not solely, by a reac- tionary influence of Protestantism upon Catholicism that the two can ever be pre- pared for mutual appreciation, on the basis of common ecclesiastical principles. In a word, the reunion of Anglo-Saxon Christi- anity is essential to its reunion with Latin and Greek Christianity. THE PPESBYTEPIAN AND EPISCOPAL CHURCHES The other inference is, that in this work of Protestant unification the Presbyterian 42 CIIURCU UNITY Church stands next to the Protestant Epis- copal Church, as together with it holding the key of the situation. In this country, at least, they are the two chief English- speaking communions, and have a common mission in promoting American church unity. If it be granted that the Episcopal Church seems destined to be the Church of the Reconciliation, mediating between the extreme wings of Christendom by its com- bined Catholic and Protestant formularies, yet it still needs the balancing influences represented by the Presbyterian Church, on the one side, to prevent it from careen- ing as a mere feeder to the Roman com- munion, and on the other side to keep it in vital connection with the whole reformed communion. Its theoretical position will otherwise become practically untenable. If it be urged that it is the natural nucleus of church unity in our Anglo-American civilization, yet the two sister churches have had a common history in the mother country and still have correlate standards, ecclesiastical affinities, and common inter- ests, which fit them to march together as the advanced column toward the United Church of the United States, drawing after G I N /. R . ! I PR IN CI PL EB 4 3 them other churches and denominations. 1 In a word, as the general reunion of Christendom turns upon the reunion of Protestantism and Catholicism, so the reunion of Protestantism and Catholicism turns upon the reunion of presbytery and episcopacy. THE RECENT ECCLESIASTICAL CONFERENCES It is a striking proof of the common mission of the two churches that as yet they are the only two communions in Christendom winch have met on the Lam- beth basis for formal conferences. Dur- ing the past six years they have been 1 It may be added, that the situation is complicated by rival claimants, Protestant as well as Catholic. Not only do the Orthodox Greek and Roman Catholic branches of the historic episcopate co-exist with the Protestant Episcopal in our country ; but we have also the Moravian and Reformed episcopates, and are likely- soon to have a Lutheran episcopate, all claiming equal validity with the Anglican. Amid this confusion and conflict of denominational episcopates, the unification of the Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal churches may be important in maintaining the ascendency of the Anglo-American type of ecclesiastical Christianity in our civilization. 44 CHURCII UNITY negotiating through, authorized represent- atives. It is true, and a pity 'tis true, that these conferences have met with a temporary check and recoil. But no irrec- oncilable differences have been brought to light. Simply some mistakes have been made, which it is easy now to under- stand. With the utmost respect and def- erence, I beg to state them frankly. On the one side, it was a mistake when nego- tiating with the Protestant Episcopal Church alone, to make common cause with other less ecclesiastical denomina- tions on the trivial side-issue of an indis- criminate exchange of pulpits. And the mistake was aggravated by putting this " doctrine of ministerial reciprocity " of- fensively in front of other and weightier questions upon "which it depended and making it a seeming condition of any further conferences. On the other side, it was a mistake to meet that side-issue in a newspaper symposium with a peace- measure which was like Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon, " an olive branch discharged from a catapult." And afterwards, when the Presbyterian Committee had explained their unfortunate action and sent such a GENERAL PRINCIPLES 45 messenger of peace, 1 was it wise, if quite just or necessary, to terminate the sus- pended conferences? 2 Such mistakes arc; mere passing shadows upon the onward movement, and will do more good than harm if they help us to see the real mis- conceptions which still becloud the situa- tion on both sides of the horizon. Let us deal with them faithfully and in the spirit of the most perfect Christian candor and patience. PKESBYTERIAN MISCONCEPTIONS And first, the Presbyterian misconcep- tions. One of them is a general misap- prehension of the spirit and motive of the Lambeth proposals. It is often said that our Episcopal friends are "insincere," 1 The Rev. Dr. Joseph T. Smith : " The visit was made, not on the invitation of the Episcopal Commission, but by appointment of the Presbyterian Committee. Ami this appointment was, under the circumstances, an act of such marked magnanimity that it ought to be known." The Churchman, February, 1896. 2 "Whether right or wrong," says Dr. Smith, "the Episcopal Commission regarded the action of the As- sembly of 1893 as an abandonment of the negotiations on which we had thus far been engaged and as equiva- lent to the expression of a desire on its part that all negotiations between us should cease." 46 CIIURCH UNITY "arrogant," "offensive," in offering terms of unity to other historic churches that they will only characterize as " Christian bodies," "sects," and even "dissenters." Such fashions of speech, whatever may be thought of them, do not alter facts and things. The Church of England is re- garded as no better than a sect by the oldest churches in Christendom; and the Episcopal Church in Scotland is treated as only a dissenting Christian body, whose prelates could not lawfully take prece- dence of a Presbyterian minister. The gracious Queen herself devoutly receives Presbyterian communion. In a country like ours, with no established religion, why withhold the civil title "Church" while conceding the polite use of the ecclesi- astical title "Reverend"? Such slights to some minds are as irritating as the Roman Catholic repudiation of Anglican orders. Nevertheless, the simple fact that in the face of such inconsistences and at the risk of sacrificing courtesy to prin- ciple, some Episcopalians do take high churchly ground against Presbyterian orders, shows the strength and honesty of their convictions. Does any one doubt GENERAL PRINCIPLES 47 that they do not feel keenly their isolation from their fellow Christians? Why, they have been discussing among themselves this matter of church unity for fifty years, while Presbyterians have not moved an inch toward them. After much mis- giving they have offered grave conces- sions, upon which Presbyterians have only advanced with fresh demands and scruples. One feels almost ashamed to notice such objections, when he thinks of that apostle of the movement, the noble-hearted Muh- lenberg, and now, alas ! of its zealous martyr, the lamented Langdon, to say nothing of its still living advocates, who are showing us every day that the strict- est churchmanship may consist with an earnest desire for church unity. There is also a Presbyterian misconcep- tion of the scope of the historic episco- pate. Because that much misrepresented institution is sometimes vindicated on ex- treme High Church ground, as involving an exclusively prelatical transmission of supernatural grace from the apostles, and because it is proffered for acceptance with all the claims and appliances of a priestly ritual, it is inferred that such is the only 48 CnURCH UNITY opinion or theory that can be attached to it and made congruous with it. In point of fact, however, as every student of church history knows, the greatest variety of opinions and theories have been con- nected with it and are now loyally sup- porting it. 1 For this reason, from a 1 The Rev. Francis J. Hall, in his lecture before the Church Club of New York, has done me the honor to comment upon this view of the historic episcopate, and I am glad to find it supported by his reasoning. He shows conclusively, that the Protestant Episcopal Church "has not inserted her doctrine of the Ministry in the constitution of her general convention ; " that " she has nowhere set forth her doctrine of the Ministry in connected order and detail in her formularies ; " and that "she has not defined the doctrine of Apostolical Succession in set terms " (pp. 158-161 ). In other words, it is not a Church dogma set forth in the Church stand- ards as an essential part of the Catholic faith, but is simply a pious opinion neither enjoined nor forbidden. As an opinion it is indeed now held in various forms and degrees by various schools of churchmen; but as a so-called Catholic doctrine it is not defined, or even named, in the creeds, articles, ordinal, or Prayer-Book. The mere occurrence of the vague phrase, " Ministers of the Apostolical Succession," in an American collect seldom used, is not a definition of Catholic doctrine; nor would that phrase, as strictly construed, imply any- thing more than a general or presbyterial succession of the Avhole Christian ministry. As no view of Apostolic Succession is either enjoined or forbidden in the Prayer-Book, so none is enjoined or GENERAL PRINCIPLES 49 church unity point of view, there is no need to say a word against our ritualistic friends, or to assail their view of apostolic succession. The historic episcopate is large enough to include them, and we may hope that our enlightened bishops will give them all the room they want, pro- vided that room enough be left for those Presbyterian churchmen, otherwise called Evangelical Catholics, who gladly accept all that is transmissible from the apostles and can even admire an artistic liturgy, if not obliged to adopt all the Roman dogmas sometimes couched under its S} r mbolism. There is still another Presbyterian mis- conception as to the supposed accompani- ments or consequences of the Lambeth ten- ets. It is feared that they are only an enter- ing wedge, and are so bound up with the constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church that they will yet draw after them all its legislative machinery. Well, even if that were so, an elective episcopate, with Presbyterian deputies, would not be an un- forbidden in the Quadrilateral. It is this largeness of interpretation which makes the historic episcopate at once so ample and so tenacious a bond of church unity. 4 50 CHURCH UNITY mixed calamity. It is conceivable that Presbyterians and Episcopalians might live happily together in such an Ameri- can church as contrasted with the un- presbyterianized Church of England. But the truth is, that the Lambeth principles are no longer solely Anglican or American in their limitations. In considering them we are no more concerned with the Pro- testant Episcopal Church than with the Church of England, and no more con- cerned with the Church of England than with any other portion of the Catholic Church. We are only concerned with the historic episcopate as represented by the Anglican branch of it. Theoretically, we are not even concerned with the Angli- can branch of it, since the same bond of church unity might be effected with the Moravian, Swedish, or Old Catholic branch of it. Practically, however, we are most naturally and hopefully concerned with our American College of Bishops, who have openly shown that they are at once the most cautious and the most progres- sive part of the communion to which they belong, at least as respects church unity. They have nobly taken a position outside GENERAL PRINCIPLES 51 of that communion, before the whole Chris- tian world, as "bishops in the church of God," and are not likely now to retreat from it because of any tardy or reluctant following on the part of a school or a faction. EPISCOPALIAN MISCONCEPTIONS On the other side are some grave Epis- copalian misconceptions which should be discussed with equal frankness. One of them is the general misapprehension of the Presbyterian idea of the Church. It seems to be assumed by our separated brethren that Presbyterians are not church- men. Yet they claim to be good church- men? There is not a tenet of sound churchmanship which, they do not hold, and hold as tenaciously as the mass of Episcopalian churchmen. Is the test to be Catholicity, the claim to be a part of the Catholic Church? Before the Protest- ant Episcopal Church was born, the Presbyterian Church had defined itself in its standards as part of that "Catho- lic visible church into which Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordi- nances of God." Is the test to be Apos- 52 CHURCH UNITY tolicity, — connection with the apostolic commission ? The succession of pres- byters from the apostles is undisputed throughout Christendom, even where the prelatic succession has been broken. They do not often boast of it, nor too much value it ; but they have it, as a person of good descent has such a lineage, and knows that he has it, though he may not display it before the world. Lastly, is the test to be fidelity to that " sacred deposit of the primitive faith and order which Christ and his apostles committed to the Church ? " 1 There is no sense in which Presbyterian ministers are not " ordained to be stewards and trustees of that deposit for the common and equal benefit of all men." Nor do they hold one another lightly to their ordination vows. They can, indeed, gladly honor the American bishops as also and pre-eminently custodians of the same deposit ; and if they do not concede to them an exclusive "stew- ardship of grace and truth," in this opinion they are sustained by all the rest of Chris- tendom, both Catholic and Protestant. There is another Episcopalian miscon- ception as to the historic liturgy contained 1 The Preamble of the Chicago Declaration. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 53 in the Prayer-Book. It is now held by some churchmen that the Lambeth terms are only "Catholic minima" which may or must draw after them a long train of other ecclesiastical requirements ; and it has been surmised that the addition of the whole Prayer-Book to those terms would make their acceptance difficult, if not impossible, especially for Presbyterians. The day was, indeed, wdien the armed im- position of that excellent liturgy upon a Presbyterian assembly in St. Giles's Cathe- dral w T as attended with responses more forcible than decorous, and the reading of a single collect was enough to kindle a war of kingdoms as well as churches. But " the whirligig of time brings strange re- venges." Let us hear the sequel: Jenny Geddes lived to throw that Presbyterian idol, her famous tripod, into a bon-fire cele- brating the return of royalty, liturgy, and episcopacy. 1 It was another extreme act, 1 " I cannot help mentioning as remarkable, that on the 23rd April, 1661, Jenny Geddes, the very woman who had given the first signal of civil broil by throw- ing her stool at the Dean of Edinburgh's head, when he read the service-book on the memorablo 23d July, 1637, showed her conversion to loyalty by contributing the materials of her green-stall, her baskets, shells, 54 CHURCH UNITY but the wisest and bravest aet of her life, and the spirit of it worthy of some judi- cious imitation. It has been so imitated on the very scene of her exploit. 1 It might be so imitated in the changed circumstances of our own country. The voluntary re- sumption of the English Prayer-Book for optional use with more spontaneous ser- vices, would be neither inconsistent nor unseemly. There never has been any large amount of directly anti-Presbyterian mate- rial in the whole book : there is not now, two or three phrases excepted. Moreover, it was carefully revised by some of the very same Westminster divines who had framed the Presbyterian standards. As thus amended, it would be an excellent manual to accompany the Directory of Worship. No church law or good reason exists why it should not be used in every forms, and even her own wicker-chair, to augment a bon-fire kindled in honor of his Majesty's coronation, and the proceedings of his Parliament." — Sir Walter Scott, Tales of a Grandfather, Second Series, Vol. I. 1 The Church Service Society, of which the Duke of Argyle is president, has issued an edition of the Scottish Book of Common Order, which is composed largely of portions of the English Book of Common Prayer, and is already in use in many parishes of the Established Church of Scotland. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 55 Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, or wherever else there is a state of culture requiring it. By all means let us have the Prayer-Book, " from cover to cover," l from its Calvinistie Declaration of ab- solution to its collect for instituting pres- byters as ministers of the Apostolic Succession. There is a still graver Episcopalian mis- conception of the motives and reasons with which the historic episcopate might be accepted. To some denominations, no doubt, it presents itself as subversive of their entire doctrine and polity, but not to the most intelligent and consistent Presby- terians. To them it would simply be a development of the apostolic presbyterate, desirable in the interest of church unity. Whenever ready to accept it, it would not be because they doubted the validity of their own ministry and sacraments : as to tins they would retain the freedom of their own thoughts. It would not be solely that they might obtain certain acknowledged advantages of Episcopal church govern- ment ; these they could obtain, like the 4 A phrase used in the debates of the late Triennial Convention at Minneapolis. 56 CHURCII UNITY Methodist Episcopalians, by developing an episcopate of their own. It would not even be that they might secure a unifying sanction to their church claims ; for such a purpose other branches of the historic episcopate might yet become available. No ; it would simply be, because they loy- ally and reverently recognize in the Anglo- American episcopate the organic centre and bond of American church unity ; be- cause they believe that episcopate has a great catholic mission, if not a scriptural warrant, to promote such unity by legiti- mating evangelical ministries where they are not now recognized ; by giving all denominations a ministry as catholic as it is legitimate ; by knitting together ecclesi- astical elements, Congregational, Presby- terial, and Episcopal, which are now dis- membered, and thus healing the wounds in the body of Christ; in a word, by everywhere restoring and completing the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. THE FEASIBLE EFFORT FOE UNITY. The discussion has left but little time for the most practical part of the subject, — the methods of promoting church unity GENERAL PRINCIPLES 57 on the Lambeth basis. Unhappily, these are not yet sueli as to satisfy impatient minds eager for immediate results, hi the present state of opinion most of us can only be Nicodemite patrons of church unity. It is too much to expect that any of us should leave popular pulpits, profes- sional chairs, and editorial desks to embark in an anti-denominational crusade. Yet there are some things that we can do. "Without detaching ourselves from the Christian denominations to which we sev- erally belong, or intending to compromise our relations thereto, or seeking to interfere with other efforts for Christian unity," x we may associate ourselves voluntarily and informally for the study of the prob- lem with the view of educating ourselves and others toward its solution. We may not adopt the Lambeth principles outright as axioms ; but we may at least " accept them as worthy of the most thoughtful consideration." 1 We may not hope for any subversion or destruction of all exist- ing church organizations with revolution- ary violence, but we may believe that " upon the basis of these principles as 1 Declaration of the League of Catholic Unity. 58 CHURCH UNITY articles of agreement the unification of the Christian denominations of this coun- try may proceed, cautiously and steadily, without any alteration of their existing standards of doctrine, polity, and worship, which might not reasonably be made in a spirit of brotherly love and harmony, for the sake of unity and for the furtherance of all the great ends of the Church of Christ on earth." 1 And finally, although proposing as yet no method of carrying out these principles, we may recommend what the Lambeth Conference recommends, a comparative study of Episcopal and non- Episcopal standards of doctrine, govern- ment, and worship, with a view to their existing consensus and ultimate har- mony in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. THE LEAGUE OF CATHOLIC UNITY These are the leading features of an association known as " The League of Catholic Unity." It is the only asso- ciation in existence which plants itself squarely upon the Quadrilateral basis in full accordance with the Lambeth pro- 2 Constitution of the League of Catholic Unity. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 59 posals. Other like associations arc only in part upon that basis, or not in full accord with those proposals. Experience has shown that Church Unity societies, as composed exclusively of Episcopal clergy- men, cannot, by the necessity of the case, admit non-Episcopal ministers to a frank and full discussion of the general princi- ples of the Quadrilateral platform. Ecclesi- astical conferences, like that between the Presbyterian and Episcopal commissions, though meeting on the Quadrilateral plat- form, are managed by representative di- vines, — always tenacious, sometimes justly enough tenacious, as to their respective rights and dignities. But in the Council of the Catholic League, or in one of its Local Circles, both Episcopal and non- Episcopal ministers, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, as well as Episcopa- lians, may meet upon the Lambeth basis with equal rights and privileges, without restraint or embarrassment, and in a social atmosphere favorable to the utmost candor and fraternity. At the same time such a band of enthusiastic students, in such cir- cumstances and under such influences, by their discussions and printed papers, would 60 CnURCH UNITY naturally accumulate a valuable litera- ture as an educational agency for influ- encing public opinion in favor of church unity. Without enlarging upon the mission and methods of the Catholic Unity League, I desire to recommend, not necessarily the league itself, but its principles, to the young men who are looking forward to the sacred ministry. These principles are in the spirit of that learned and catholic-minded student of the problem, the author of the " Creeds of Christendom," who has recom- mended Symbolic, 1 the comparative study of different church standards, as an import- ant part of the equipment of a theological student, in view of the conflicting denomi- nations with which he must come in con- tact in our country. Especially may a Presbyterian minister, while loyal to his own standards, endeavor to promote that church unity which is a cardinal prin- ciple of the Presbyterian polity, as well as the highest expression of Christian fraternity. i Theological Propedeutic. By Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., Professor in Union Theological Seminary, N. Y. GENERAL PRINCIPLES Gl THE TBUB si'IKIT OE CHURCH UNITY Let me add a practical word as to the duty of church unity and the spirit in which to promote it. Every day it is be- coming plainer that the problem which we have been discussing is to be solved not so much by logic as by feeling, — godlike charity and brotherly love. The day for mere logic has gone by. No reasonings of ours could ever equal the reasonings of those ancestors, on the other side, who were once in so dead earnest as to exchange the pen for the sword and make martyrs of one another at the stake and upon the scaffold. Nor could any mere logic now beat down our inherited prejudices, denominational rivalries, and social jealousies. The o x ues- tions which still divide us can only be settled by being ignored with mutual tol- erance and left to the natural operation of the laws of thought, or rather to the super- natural influences of heaven-born charity. The Christian love which is already in our hearts must be allowed to embrace all our fellow Christians as members with us of the visible Church of Christ. The supreme test of church unity is our Saviour's own 62 church unity commandment, " Love thy neighbor as thy- self." Do you ask in this connection, " Who is my neighbor ? " Answer the question, not in the lowest sense of mere almsgiving, but in the highest sense of true charity. Who is my neighbor ? Not necessarily one who lives nigh or near me. The way- faring Jew was in this sense no neighbor to the Samaritan. Nor can mere local neighborship exhaust church membership or church fellowship. There was indeed some plea for the local church, when it landed on the bleak New England coast, with the stormy Atlantic between it and a persecuting Christendom. But now, when that ocean is itself throbbing with electric sympathy and the whole Christian world kindling into brotherhood, the true church member whom I am to fellowship may live in Old England or in New England, next door or on the other side of the globe ; if he is a fellow man and a fellow Christian, he is my neighbor. Who is my neighbor ? Not merely one who is nigh of kin, of the same blood or race. The Jew was of a different tribe or nation from the Samaritan. There were GENERAL PRINCIPLES 63 no dealings between them, or a commerce only of insults. Yet that foreigner was recognized as a neighbor. And so, mere nationality cannot limit church member- ship or set bounds to church catholicity. If in the old world geographical barriers and political institutions seemed to make necessary or convenient a German Church, a Dutch Church, a French Church, an English Church, a Scotch Church, yet here in this new world, with all peoples and kindreds and tongues fusing in our blood and mingling in our households, nothing human and Christian can be foreign to us. My fellow church member may be of Euro- pean or American birth, of Roman, Angli- can, or Scottish training; if he has the same Father in Heaven, if he is my kins- man in Christ, then he is my neighbor. Who is my neighbor ? Not exclusively one who is near to me in his belief, of the same creed or sect. The Samaritan had been excommunicated as a heretic by the Jew, whose own co-religionists, the priest and the Levite, had already passed him by in sanctimonious conceit and churchly pride. It was that difference of religion, rather than any difference of race or train- 64 CHURCH UNITY ing, that made the victory of neighborly feeling so difficult, yet so glorious. He treated even his old persecutor as a neigh- bor. Ah! there may have seemed some excuse for sectarian animosity in Reforma- tion times, when Christian men were fight- ing for standing room in the church of God, and Catholic and Huguenot, Cavalier and Covenanter were carving out their creeds with their swords, and illuminating them with faggots ; but in this free land of free churches, with all sects and creeds shedding their errors and blending their truths in the searching light of science, learning, and thought, who of us can be infallible ? The ideal churchman with whom I must be willing to fraternize may be Romanist or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian, Congre- gationalist,Presbyterian,or Episcopalian, — if he is a fellow disciple of the same divine Master, if he is a fellow sinner who craves the same Saviour to atone for his errors and for mine, — then he is my neighbor. Can you bring yourself up to the high test ? Think not of some poor churchless outcast needing only your neighborly gifts of food and raiment. Think rather of some unchurching or of some unchurched brother GENERAL PRINCIPLES 65 in Christ, needing your neighborly offices of Christian love and communion. Think of some fellow Christian, who seems as far removed from your type of Christian as the Jew was from the Samaritan. Think of that " canting zealot " whom you thoroughly dislike ; or of that " sentimental ritualist " whom you scornfully pity ; of that " rant- ing revivalist ; " of that " narrow Bap- tist ; " of that " rigid Calvinist ; " of that " lax Arminian ; " of that " supercilious Anglican ; " of that " bigoted Romanist." Remember how the Samaritan loved the hating and hated Jew, and " Go thou and do likewise." II THE SIN OF SCHISM Br the Rev. E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, LL. D. President of Brown University, Providence, R. I. THE SIN OF SCHISM " T~\ENOMINATION " is a modern con- JL^ ception. The word does not occur in the New Testament, nor is the thought there to be voiced by any other word. In the sacred oracles " Church " is the great idea. Jesus Christ declared that he would found a church, and that the powers of hell should not prevail against it. The apostles seconded him in this aim, ever and every- where toiling to add size and beauty to that divine body, the Church, whereof Christ was Head. In New Testament conception the Church is no mere assemblage of churches, as has been sometimes imagined, as if the local church were primary and Church in the general sense secondary. The relation is precisely the reverse. The Church Catholic is always the foremost notion ; so that when the church at Antioch, for instance, is spoken of, or the church at 70 CHURCH UNITY Corinth, the idea is the Church general, so far as realized or manifested in this or that place. The Church, as viewed by the New Testament writers, is not a compos- ite affair, made up of diverse parts, but a single, rounded totality with many facets. These facets are the local churches. This grand, primitive view of the Church, as a seamless total, an indivisible whole, continued in the thought of thoughtful Christians until the Reformation. There were sects, of course ; but most of these, if not all, had the consciousness of sects, mani- festing their respect for the principle of unity by contending for the title of ortho- doxy. Each thought itself right, and would put down the rest. We have before the Reformation no spectacle of various Chris- tian bodies differing in faith and practice, yet tolerant of one another, and in some sort glad of one another's success, as is the case with the Methodist and the Presby- terian laity to-day. Denominationalism is a product of post-Reformation times. Sects were before the Reformation, denomina- tions came after. A " sect " is, literally, a cut, a slice. It implies out-and-out division, cleavage, re- THE SIN OF SCHISM 71 suiting in the independence of the parts sun- dered. The word -denomination" looks more to the superficies of things, to nomi- nal differences. It is a less radical word, giving hint of a mighty substance of belief which all denominational bodies enjoy in common. Accordant with this is the feeling of all, that sectarianism is disgrace- ful, but that there is no disgrace in being a stanch and loyal member of a Christian denomination. The distinction which I make between a sect and a denomination, more fully set forth, is this, that while each admits itself to be but a part of Christendom, the denomination, renouncing all wish that one denominational organization should prevail among God's people, and viewing essential church unity as mainly a thing of faith and of spirit, not of external organiza- tion, admits not only the civil and human, but also the divine right of all the various Christian parties to exist, considering each in its time and place as a manifestation of the Divine Spirit ; while the sect, on the other hand, insists that but one ecclesiasti- cal organization ought to prevail on earth, pretends itself alone to possess the true, 72 CHURCH UNITY authoritative polity, itself alone to have the power of the keys, and berates outside Christians for not coming within the safe fold which God has set it to keep. " I am the Church," it says, " and all the rest of you, to be sure of God's favor, must change base and come over and unite with me." In Iris attitude toward the Greek Church and toward Protestants, the Pope is a sec- tary; yet, aware of the inconsistency of assuming for his portion of Christendom the title of The One Church and yet ad- mitting the existence of other Christians, he has always betrayed a tendency to ignore the existence of other Christians altogether. Catholics in general are with him in this ; they do not like to recognize Christians who are not of their church, though, to their credit be it said, they rarely, if ever, explicitly deny that such exist. It is the great vice of denominationalism that it tends to lapse into sectarianism, to ignore the Church's unity, so leading to the sin of schism. This is the character- istic guilt of the ultra-Protestant world to-day, of Lutherans, Baptists, Congrega- 777 £ SIX OF SCHISM 73 tionalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. We liave a sharp sense of denomination, but almost no sense of church. The ordinary denominationalist now has no feeling for the old Catholic Church. Usually he hates and despises it. He re- members that it bred Leo X., but forgets that it raised up Luther, Calvin, and Knox. I know of no sadder mistaking of history than that involved in current Protestant notions of what the Church was and was doing in the years before Luther. Doubt- less very grave evils prevailed then, more in church administration than in the lives of Christian people, and far more in con- nection with the Papal See than in church administration at large. Yet, with all its errors, that old Church was God's Church, and the net influence of it was not evil, but gloriously good. Its doctrines were in the main biblical and reasonable. It taught the unity of God, the person and work of Christ, the power of the atone- ment, man's guilt and man's hope. These truths were not only held creedwise ; they were preached, by earnest men and with saving effect. The Reformation brought to the parts of Christendom which it 74 CHURCH UNITY affected immense advance in all these respects ; still it is very easy, as it is very usual, to underrate the evangelical excel- lence of the church in which Luther had his spiritual birth. Nor did the reformers export from that old Church all the good it contained. Men as holy as they preferred to remain in it ; men as holy as they have been in the old establishment ever since. I am strong Protestant enough not to be afraid to admit that there are at this moment multitudes of true and faithful Christians in the Romish communion. It is part of that Holy Catholic Church in which we all believe. I would speak and think respect- fully even of the Pope. He is head pastor of one of the oldest, noblest, and most use- ful congregations on earth, the one to which St. Paul directed the epistle reproduced in our Bibles. We may duly abominate the papal system and the papal claims without calling the Pope Antichrist or unchurching the hosts of Christians who see in his hands the keys of St. Peter. Many Protestants commit the sin of schism in the attitude they assume toward one another. The great bodies of Protes- THE SIN OF SCHISM 75 tant people are mutually friendly enough. Most of us, when we as individuals pray for the Holy Catholic Church, have before our minds a most inclusive thought. We take into our affections Catholic and Greek, Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian, Bap- tist, Methodist, Quaker, Plymouth Brother, and Soldier of the Salvation Army; and probably no one of us, in such a prayer, ever entertains the idea that these fellow Christians, to be blessed as we pray, must adopt this or that ecclesiastical costume. But no way has yet been found to rea- lize this splendid width of charity in church practice. Our ecclesiastical machinery for- bids. It is too stiff. Church officials almost always manifest a sectarian consciousness. In its administration, direction, and public spirit, nearly every Protestant body is a sect rather than a denomination. Many of the laity themselves, however catholic in their personal feelings and thinking, still regard so sacred each his special mode of church building, that they will plan to defend and bolster it even when souls are visibly perishing in consequence of such narrowness. The Pope is not a whit stirrer in this than thoughtless Protestants are. 76 CHURCII UNITY Forgetting that under any one's theory church polity is naught but a means, good people in effect make it an end. That is the sectary's fallacy. Very strong denominational feeling al- ways tends to become sectarian. While, as has been said, the laymen of the Christian world are usually not so, church officials are very commonly sectarian in thought and speech. Nearly all our Protestant re- ligious newspapers speak as the organs of sects rather than of denominations. Each claims for its party in some sense the power of the keys. I am acquainted with minis- ters whose glee would be keener at wel- coming into their churches Christians of other names than if they were permitted to baptise so many heathen. Communities are not rare in this land where competi- tion is far sharper between the different denominations than between Christ's king- dom and Satan's. Of course, so long and so far as this spirit prevails, denominations have no chance to come by any better understand- ing of one another's grounds for their peculiar contentions than they now have ; no opportunity, should any of these grounds THE SIN OF SCHISM 77 lose force owing to lapse of time or change of circumstances, to see this, so that divi- sions might cease when no longer called for. It seems to be the common view that a denomination, in order to promote to the utmost its peculiar tenets, must separate itself as completely as possible from all who reject these tenets. That is, if certain Christian people entertain what you call errors, you cannot duly testify against those errors without excluding those people from your church. To my mind this is wholly wrong. The logic of it is that to influence men with my truth I must put them as far as possible away from me. Nothing could be more senseless. Of what use, in a con- gregation where all believe in it, is a ser- mon, for instance, on immersion ? Were we nearer together, more mixed up, as it were, such a shot would find its mark. The crisp cleavage between denominations involves a double disadvantage. Important special- ties in faith remain too much without in- fluence, and pernicious oddities too much without rebuke. Of course "birds of a feather will flock together." Those who agree in belief will ever tend to affiliate. 78 CHURCH UNITY Let them do so by all means. But they need not be bulkheaded off from others. We have sets and stripes in our American society, but as yet, thank God, no castes. So should it be in religious organization. Sectarianism is to blame for it that we do mot have better union, direction, and sys- tem in city evangelization, in religious effort for country communities, and in planting Christianity on our Western fron- tier. To our shame be it said, the utmost cross purposes and confusion prevail in these fields. Throughout the work of Protestant churches there is almost total lack of co-ordination, hardly a trace of that order and economy which enable the Romanists to accomplish such wonders with their slender resources. In cities, numerous powerful congregations huddle together where one of them could do as much good as all do now. Eveiy mission field in a wealthy neighborhood is fought for by a half score of denominations, while the dives and slums are neglected about in proportion to their need. In each country town two, four, six, sometimes eight or ten apologies for churches try to live where one strong one would suffice ; where, moreover, THE SIN OF SCHISM 79 such strong church could easily be built up by combination of effort, and where, being erected, it would have ten times the saving power which all the weaklings at present exert. In almost any of the rising towns of the West you may see a sight winch Christen- dom entire ought not to show, — from half a dozen to a dozen struggling churches, with under-fed ministers, inadequate ac- commodations, and a discouraging outlook every way, much of such meagre support as they do receive coming from the East, not one among them powerful or promis- ing enough to entice the lukewarm or to make evil-doers reflect. Christians moving to the place, seeing the financial burden it must entail to join any of the churches, re- main churchless ; while the unbeliever, who would under other circumstances at least send his children to Sunday School and occasionally go to church himself, lapses into heathenism with all his house. Many, if not most, of our poorer rural and frontier communities are threatened with desperate apathy touching religion ; a practical infidelity, carrying with it the grossest immoralities. In many parts these 80 CnURCU UNITY evils are already realized. No centralized embodiment of spiritual force, like " The Church " of the middle ages, is available for combating them. It is doubtful whether the expression, " The Church," has, to the ordinary man of the world, any meaning whatever. If he frames a thought corre- sponding with it, he probably thinks of the Roman Catholic Church, which, if he is not a Catholic, awakens in him no veneration, lays upon his conscience no restraint, no commandment. Yet, in the face of the perils referred to, religious teachers, each in his little patch of the Lord's vineyard, serenely go on, in- culcating the old divisive church polity, unfortunately having influence enough to continue the anarchy, and even to invest it, in the minds of many excellent Chris- tians, with a sort of sacredness. Nine tenths of the good people thus preventing each other from religious usefulness no doubt surmise their error, and might easily be led to act differently; but, not being experts in theology, they suppose their present course somehow right because the ecclesiastical authorities over them approve it, particularly as, by sedulous begging in THE s/.\ OF SCHIBM 81 remote places, where the state of affairs is not known, those authorities manage to provide them with goodly sums of money to sink. It is by this flagitious anarchy that Protestants continually play into the hands of the Catholic Church. We shall have increasing cause to dread papal su- premacy in America so long as our religious resources are thus foolishly and criminally frittered away. Were denominations less far apart, this evil would not be. Nothing is responsible for it but our painful prefer- ence of Shibboleth to salvation. Our foreign missionaries have set us a noble example in this matter. They parcel out the field, and no man builds on another's foundation. We shall one day learn the same wisdom at home. This persistent idea of the power of the keys at first seems hard to understand. It goes back, however, to the notion of a divine ecclesiastical legitimacy. Most Protestants are of the opinion, or at least have been until recently, that Clrrist, in the New Testament, ordains a given fixed ecclesiastical polity for all time. The Papists, and, in part, the Episcopalians, locate the divine authority for their polity 82 CHURCH UNITY in the Church, somewhat independently of Scripture. Of course, if there is com- mitted to us any definite polity prescribed in perpetuity, with the seal of divine au- thority upon it, then we must maintain that polity at whatever cost. We must cling to it ourselves ; we must fight for it against those trying to subvert it. Any church, any sect supposing itself in pos- session of a divinely ordained form of church building, cannot do otherwise than maintain such, though it should seem to work, though it should confessedly and certainly work divisively in Christendom. Upon that theoiy we should have to say, " God's will be done," though the results at present, to all human appearance, are the reverse of helpful to the progress of Iris kingdom. He knows best, and who are we that our finite judgments should pre- sume to dictate to infinite wisdom? If your polity can be shown to be divinely legitimate, you, of course, have the power of the keys ; and you have no option but to assert and maintain that power against all comers. Here is the heart of our difficulty. For my part I deny, root and branch, the TTIE SIX OF SCHISM 83 doctrine of a primordial ecclesiastical legiti- macy. No special form of polity is pre- scribed in the New Testament. In the New Testament as a whole, no special form is exemplified. Germs of all forms a iv there, but no one is carried through to the exclusion of the others. In the group of bishop-elders with which every New Testament church, however small, is fitted out, you have the presbytery. The church of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Corinth, or of Rome at the time of Paul's death, — the one church in each of these cities com- prising numerous congregations, and the board of bishop-elders in each probably having by this time a more or less perma- nent chairman, — gives you a picture of an Episcopalian diocese. Throughout the Asi- atic circle all the churches recognize a centre of paramount authority in the church at Jerusalem, which church, on occasion, assumes to issue dogmata, or authoritative prescriptions, which all are to keep. In this department of primitive Christendom, moreover, James, who is neither bishop nor elder, whose name is also an official title, almost like Caesar's, has something the authority of a pope. In the Pauline 84 CIIURCn UNITY or European circle, on the other hand, in the first age of Christianity, all the churches are independent of one another, like Bap- tist and Congregational churches to-day ; and the dogmata issued at Jerusalem, though exactly fitting difficulties that arose in the church at Corinth, are unknown or ignored by the apostle when treating of those difficulties. There is no ground whatever in Scrip- tural precept or example for asserting any form of polity as particularly legitimate. The Romanist is correct in alleging that authority has been lodged in the Church to work out its own polity ; but he has no right to say that his one department of the Church is a law, or can give law, to all Christendom. His church constitution is good for him, no doubt ; it is good, and any form of polity is good, so far as it works well. The note of church legiti- macy is doing church work. Any organi- zation bearing this mark, however imperfect its means, however humble its aspect, is a legitimate part of the one Church, and must not be despised. The great demand of religion in the Protestant world to-day is that the Chris- THE SIN OF SCHISM 85 tian denominations should entirely cease claiming the power of the keys ; leave off being sects, and come up to their ideal as only so many facets of the Holy Catholic Church. I do not say that this renewed sense of church is all that is needed in the direction of church unity. I allege only that this is our prime and generic necessity. Denominational federation, or the exten- sion of the historic episcopate, may follow ; nay, something in the way of fuller organi- zation will be sure to follow. But it is useless to attempt reform in external or- ganization among the churches till a healthy ecclesiastical consciousness is born again. Christendom needs once more the old sense of love for all God's people by all God's people. We are not enemies, but friends. What unites us is far more important than what divides. Nor is there necessarily any incompati- bility between the fact of denominations and the sense of catholicity. I would not have denominations cease to be ; an at- tempt to abolish them were equally foolish and vain. But I would have each see it- self in its right relations to the rest, lay aside all arrogance and sense of superior- 86 CHURCH UNITY ity; in a word, all claim to the power of the keys, recognizing the rest, more than we do, as allies, that we might toil in a more united way than now for the estab- lishment of God's kingdom amonsr men. To see how possible it would be to pre- serve denominations in all their useful meaning, yet all of them renouncing the power of the keys, we have only to gen- eralize in thought what goes on in every religious organization, however diminu- tive, to-day. Each of them has its high church, low church, and broad church party, its progressive and its conservative tendency. In one congregation nearly all are advanced thinkers; in another almost all fear and deprecate innovation. One runs to ritual; another subordinates or abhors ritual. In a community of size, containing several congregations of the same faith and order, these likes and dis- likes get themselves humored by a natural process of grouping. Harmony is easy then. But even in smaller places, where people of divergent tastes form one con- gregation, though they may debate and strive, each stripe trying to impart its color to the whole, such rivalry hardly THE SIN OF SCHISM 87 ever passes the limit of health or leads to division. Even when the tension is ex- treme and one section or "another secedes, the seceders hardly ever presume to origi- nate a new sect. The separation leads neither side to unchurch the other. If they were Lutherans before, both are Lutherans still ; if Disciples, Disciples ; if Baptists, Baptists ; and so on. What reason is there, I ask, but the pride and folly of good men, why this fraternal shad- ing and grouping of Christian bodies should not extend throughout Christen- dom ? We easily generalize it in thought ; why may it not be made general in fact ? To see in another way that this is a distinct possibility one need only recur to the time in the old Catholic Church be- fore the papacy acquired its supremacy, say in the days of Cyprian. Then the sense of church, of catholicity, was as high as it has ever been, wdiile every bish- opric claimed the right to act and grow in its own way, subject only to the author- ity of general councils. Let us suppose that this order of things had continued and developed, and that councils had al- ways declined to assume authority save 88 CI1URCII UNITY in absolutely fundamental matters of faith. All peculiarities of belief, of practice, and of polity would then have been free to work themselves out. After a time, hardly two congregations would have agreed in all things. National and local churches would have had their dissi- dencies of view, just as they have had. There would have been parties and tend- encies of all sorts. Calvinism when it came would have had its champions and its opponents, each side free to say its last word. When diversities of belief and practice grew too tense in any local church some would freely withdraw to cast in their lot elsewhere. Here would be a congregation of ritualists, yonder one worshipping like Quakers or the Ply- mouth Brethren. Every biblical truth, every extreme, every folly, every error, even, would be represented somewhere. Yet nowhere would there be exclusion. Extremes of view and of organization would shade off gradually, and you would seek in vain for any of that crisp cleavage of party from party which characterizes sects. No section or tendency would claim to be the Church. No man would THE SIX OF SCUISM 89 unchurch another. No church dignitary would pretend, in the pupal sense, to bind or to loose. Some model like this, it seems to me, oucrht denominationalism to hold before itself, as the goal for its advance. To a goodly extent we realize it already, and if the great commonalty of Protestant Chris- tians were free to act out its best spirit we should realize it perfectly. But there still remains in the government of all denominations a certain thought of author- ity, an unvoiced but potent claim to the power of the keys, an unclear yet positive assumption of special ecclesiastical legiti- macy, winch makes impossible that useful harmony and co-operation which but for tins we could so easily effect. More than for all else do I blame Rome for ending that beautiful old ecclesiastical develop- ment to which I have alluded, introducing the exercise of ecclesiastical power, and so familiarizing the Church with it that no denomination yet, however ultra its Protestantism, has felt free to renounce the assumption of it. I believe, no less than a papist, in the organic unity of God's people ; for faith 90 CIIURCn UNITY organically connects all who possess it into one vital body. But this organic unity need not carry with it any particular machinery of ecclesiastical organization. External organization is a different, a much coarser thing. For my part, I repudiate utterly the notion that the unity which our Lord prayed for on behalf of his Church is primarily unity in external, visible organization. Such unity is not the main matter, not the most necessary, not the most desirable attainment. What we need first and most is unity of spirit in the bond of peace. Church organization is important, in some ages all-important. Every church polity that ever existed, the papal system included, has had, or still has, its relative justification. It is with polities as with doctrinal state- ments. All of them that have ever found currency anywhere in the Church had in their time and place some measure of truth, some sort of propriety. They were the natural and inevitable results springing from the operation of Christian truth upon men's minds so and so educated, developed, and influenced. But Christian humanity, like all human- 1 THE SIN OF SCHISM 91 it} r , "sweeps onward," and governments and creeds which once were the best pos- Vsible expression of divine faith t^ecome outworn and u gcflfllfc hi EKe advance, one division of the faithful will be the first to spy out a new truth, another will do equal good by tenaciously holding on to some rubric which the rest were too ready to dismiss. Each will of coarse be strenuous for the aspects of truth which most separate it from the rest, but not one will have any right to call itself pre-eminently the Church of God, whether in polity or in doctrine. If any does so, if any excludes its neighbor, saying : You neglect tins or that important item of belief, therefore you are not of the Church; if any in any way claims the power of the keys, we shall look upon such assumption precisely as we do upon that of the Pope, as insufferable arrogance, proof that the perfect vision of Christ's mind has not yet come to all. The renunciation of sectarianism is, then, the first and great duty of the Church in view of its dividedness. A correct idea and feeling must be built up touching the meaning of " church." If this cannot be effected, all effort will be vain. So long 92 CHURCIl UNITY as any party of Christians says, — " We practise so and so, and are therefore pre- eminently the Church ; we are the Chnrch and you are not," — scorning or patronizing others who produce all the fruits of the spirit ; — so long must the reunion of Chris- tendom wait. Even were it known that the episcopate would prove the church uni- fying force which so many hope, churchmen would not on that account be justified in calling themselves the Church par excel- lence* Speaking generally, no denomina- tions are at this moment to be reprehended for existing apart. If a few are to-day in fault for this, very few, certainly, were to blame for coming into existence in the first place. Nearly every rent in the Church has occurred for good conscience' sake, a new party forming because the old body was too arrogant. Any thought about the reunion of Christendom which expects it to occur by come-outers' retracing their steps is wholly fatuous. We shall never arrive at unity by arbitrarily suppressing the peculiarities of this or that denomina- tion. If Catholicity is ever to return to the Church, it will have to be vastly larger and more comprehensive than ever existed THE SIN OF SCHISM 93 before. It must be immense enough to include us nil, pretty much as we are. It will have to consist mainly in a new spirit, as I have said; in the better way in which we shall regard, approach, and help one another. As it is not possible, so neither is it neces- sary or desirable that the various denomina- tions should merge into a homogeneous bod}\ All need not teach the same views concerning either doctrine or polity. What is needed is*that all church people as such should come to believe — effectively — what nearly all even now privately ac- knowledge, that polity is good for nothing save as an instrument in the Church's saving work; that church orders and ordinances were made for men, not men for them. Let this truth be taken up into Christian teaching everywhere, and the Christian love in good men's hearts will spontane- ously prompt them, whenever the two interests clash, to subordinate mere matters of polity to the promotion of truth, the salvation of wicked men, and the edifica- tion of good men. A main reason why proper catholicity in feeling is so desirable is that it would 94 CHURCH UNITY bring certain needed changes in churches' external relations. We see this in the pleasing fact that no sooner does the need of church unity begin to be earnestly discussed than you have the Young Men's Christian Association, the Evangelical Alliance, with the local denominational alliances to which it is now happily giving birth, the Grindelwald Conference, origin- ated and inspired by Dr. Lunn, the great Society of Christian Endeavorers, and a thousand other forms of interdenomina- tional co-operation, reciprocity, and comity which recently did not exist. This move- ment will be extended further. A plan so simple that it has occurred even to me would, if carried out, as it has begun to be, annul many baneful results of present schism. Let the denominations represented in any State each elect one well-known min- ister and one well-known layman to serve with similar officers from the other denom- inations, upon a State Advisory Church Advancement Committee. Let this com- mittee diligently look over the newest fields and publish opinions like the fol- lowing: In our judgment the religious THE SIX OF SCHISM 95 welfare of Beatifica, in the county of Gaudium, requires that for the present all Christian residents in the place assist the Methodists, the Methodists there hav- ing gotten the strongest foothold. In our judgment, the religious welfare of Gloriana, the rapidly growing shire town of Excelsior County, demands that all shall aid the Presbyterians of the place. And so on. In due time churches of other faiths could be approbated in these same localities. All would be informal, unauthoritative, non-compulsory, the sys- tem acting by moral force and public senti- ment alone. What would be the result of such a policy ? Instead of many spindling plants, each town would soon have at least one strong church, with an able ministry, a flourishing Sunday School, good music, and desirable accommodations of every kind. Cold Christians and the worldly would be attracted, unbelief would be matched, and the kingdom of God would grow apace. I am not without hope of living to see this scheme in happy exer- cise over considerable territory. If I die without the sight, some of you will not. 9G CHURCH UNITY Denominations will still stand, and each have an even better chance than now to show what grace is in it ; but, in case the response becomes general, feeble, dying churches will be far less numerous in our hamlets and border settlements ; city con- gregations will cease to crowd each other ; co-operation will supplant anarchy; all missionary fields will be cultivated up to the limit of the resources of the total church ; immense economies in the way of theological teaching, and missionary, educational, and philanthropic machinery will be introduced; and the golden age of perfected humanity be hastened in a thousand ways. After all this is done, however, much will probably remain undone. Certain real modifications of church organization will no doubt ultimately be required to give the coming catholicity practical effect. Mere correct feeling, theory, and doctrine, with comity and casual co-operation, will not suffice. The spirit of comprehension must and will create itself organs where- by to act upon the world. However, touching the changes needed by the Church in its essential constitution, Till: SIN OF SCHISM 97 many intelligent writers seem to me to ex- press themselves rashly. All have read utterances to the effect that one sole ex- ternal church organization ought to have absolutely ecumenical application. I can- not view it so. The United States need not be bound together with Europe in church organization. The spirit of true catholicity must of course reach to the ends of the earth; but nothing is to be gained, and perhaps much would be lost, by placing the whole Christian earth under one ecclesiastical government, however sim- ple and unauthoritative. Nor is it neces- sary that your outer regime should be strin- gently universal even within a given land or State. If the visible union involves the great majority of Christians ; if it is only comprehensive enough to give the word " Church " a clear and emphatic meaning in the minds of all ; powerful enough to form a hold for Christian thought and to organize Christian work, — then a thin fringe of schismatic growth about the great ecclesiastical field can occasion no harm. I feel that distinct provision should be made for a liberty like this ; for there will always be some whom the general church adminis- 7 98 CHURCH UNITY tration will not please ; who, therefore, may wish to stand outside it for a time or permanently. No constraint must be applied to such to make them conform. Were the reunion of Christendom to cost any impairment of religious liberty, most of us would prefer that it should not come. Another observation helps show that the task of absolutely necessary unification in church externals is less impossible than it at first seems. While nearly every denomi- nation in Christendom was justified in be- ginning to be, time has in many directions so far removed denominational differences that nothing but tradition now prevents fusion. The Baptists and the Free Bap- tists well illustrate this. There is no longer any propriety whatever in their apartness. The regular Baptists are no longer exclu- sively Calvinistic, nor do they uniformly practise or insist upon close communion. These two bodies could blend without the slightest surrender or sacrifice on the part of either, and with the greatest blessing to both. Little if any higher is the fence between Baptists and Congregationalists. Both have the same doctrines and the same polity. Nothing separates them except THE SIN OF SCHISM <)\) differences as to the form, and, in part, as to the subjects of baptism. But these differences did not at first or for a long time divide them, and have never, to this day, caused the entire separation of the two bodies in Great Britain. Likely enough, were these denominations to unite, many a congregation would be made up mainly of immersionists, many another mainly of non-immersionists, just as now within the Baptist denomination particular congregations vary greatly from one an- other in their thought and practice about communion. Some friction would natur- ally arise from these diverse procedures, but the danger from this source is cer- tainly not sufficient to justify in this age the out-and-out duality of two Christian bodies so closely akin to one another. This union being effected, there would be beautiful hope of coalescence between the body thus formed and the Presbyteri- ans. The notion of presbytery is not strange to Congregationalists or to Bap- tists. Those who wish episcopacy gen- eralized lay stress upon its early origin and very wide prevalence in the Church. But the presbyter is at once a more an- 100 CHURCH UNITY cient and a more ubiquitous functionary than the bishop in the Episcopalian sense of that word. The only important separatrix between Congregationalists and Baptists on the one hand and Presbyterians on the other, regards the authority of the general body over the particular congregation. But even here the difference is much less wide than it seems, since both Baptists and Con- gregationalists have for many years been developing a central power which in fact, though not in theory, to a great extent commands the particular churches. There would thus be formed an im- mense presbytero-Congregational ecclesias- ticism standing face to face with a mighty Episcopal ecclesiasticism made up of all the churches that are governed by bishops ; for these too, must, in time, draw together into practical working unity. Well, will these ecclesiasticisms stand apart forever, or will further blending occur, making one that colossal twain ? I am of opinion that that last chasm will at length be closed, and American Christendom be made one indeed. Ecclesiastical overseership is really very important. Here the bishop's polity has, for practical work, an immense THE SIN OF SCHISM 101 advantage. All will one day see this. The bishops' churches, knowing it already, will be so anxious for the generalization of the overseership that they will not be too scrupulous about the manner of effecting the consummation. By and by, I believe, the Chicago- Lambeth overture will bear fruit. All are acquainted with the nature of this. The Anglican Council, consisting of all the Protestant Episcopal bishops of Great Britain, the British colonies, and the United States, in 1888, at the last of the three meetings, — it was held at Lam- beth Palace, London, the meeting being attended by one hundred and forty-live bishops of Great Britain and America, — adopted, with slight modifications, a pro- gramme for the reunion of Christendom, which had, in 1886, been proposed by the House of Bishops in the General Conven- tion of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. This programme consists of four articles : — "I. 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. 102 CHURCH UNITY "II. The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptis- mal Symbol j and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. "III. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself, — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, — ministered with the unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him. "IV. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church. " This conference," — so runs the over- ture, — "earnestly requests the constituted authorities of the various branches of our communion, acting, as far as may be, in con- cert with one another, to make it known that they hold themselves in readiness to enter into brotherly conference (such as that which has already been proposed by the Church in the United States of America) with the rep- resentatives of other Christian communions in the English-speaking races in order to consider what steps can be taken, either toward corporate reunion, or toward such relations as may prepare the way for fuller organic unity hereafter." The first and third of these articles are already agreed upon by all Protestants; Tin: SIN OF SCHISM 103 while tho creeds named in Article II. might easily be so modified as not to ex- clude even Unitarian Christians. Serious friction arises only touching the episco- pate ; and at present this is serious indeed. Most non-Episcopalians deem the bishops intent merely on getting Nonconformists under their authority, while many Episco- palians think the Lambeth proposals a mistake anyway, and charge the bishops who published them with recreancy to church principles. At any rate, it is said, the bishops must admit to their orders only such non-Episcopal ministers as re- nounce their non-Episcopal ordination. Few of the Presbyterian, Congregational, or Baptist clergy will ever do this. But a great many clergymen in these bodies stand ready, for the sake of promoting church unity, to take bishops' orders so soon as any bishops are ready to ordain them, with the understanding that their original ordination is not abjured ; and so soon, further, as such enlarged ordination is reasonably likely not to result in merely creating a new denomination. The condi- tions for this momentous step toward the final church polity do not yet exist. The 104 CHURCH UNITY men who framed the League of Catholic Unity know this full well. Sectarianism is still too rife. Years, decades perhaps, must roll away before so splendid a con- summation can be reached. But this im- mense good is surely in store for the Church because it is Christ's Church, and because Christ, through his Church, is pledged to convert the world to himself. Ill THE IRENIC MOVEMENTS SINCE THE REFORMATION Br the Rev. JOHN F. HURST, D.D., LL. D. Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Churchy Washington, D. C. THE IRENIC MOVEMENTS SINCE THE REFORMATION Y\ /"HEN the great Reformation came to a close, the spirit of controversy prevailed everywhere on the map of the new Protestantism. The Reformed were in the ascendency in Switzerland, in Southern Germany, in Holland and Scotland. The Lutherans predominated in Central Ger- many and in the Scandinavian countries. The press teemed with controversial dis- cussions. The atmosphere of the univer- sities was lurid with the violent storm. Only at intervals was a strong word spoken for the harmony of Protestantism. Me- lanchthon had been the one peaceful spirit of the Reformation, but this irenic char- acter of the man did not avail to calm the troubled waters of the period. The question was, How long must the Prot- estantism of the continent wait for an 108 CHURCH UNITY advocate of union, and who should be the man? The earliest apostle of Christian union was George Calixtus. At the University of Helmstadt, where he was professor, 1614-1656, he became imbued with the Melanchthonian theology, and by his wide travels in England, Holland, Italy, and France, he formed a larger acquaintance with other churches than was common with either the Lutherans or Reformed of his day. This brought him to a breadth of view far in advance of his time. He was an earnest Lutheran, always maintaining that the Lutheran Church was the purest of all. But he saw the transcendent im- portance of those great doctrines on which all Protestants were agreed, and he laid down as a basis of Christian union the New Testament as interpreted by the Church of the first five centuries. He contended that the points on which the churches differed were unimportant by the side of the fundamental points of Chris- tian theology which they had inherited in common from the purest ages of the faith. The churches should work together in peace and harmony, paving the way for a IREN1C MOVEMENTS 109 possible union. Calixtus did not at first advocate a formal union. A conference for Christian union was appointed at Thorn in 1645, but nothing came of it except as a wise and pacific example. The strict Lutherans opposed him with intense bitter- ness. He was called by some a Crypto- Calvinist, by others a secret Papist. It is pathetic to read how the well-meant efforts of the Helmstadt peacemaker were frus- trated and denounced by the vehement controversialists of that age. Walch called him Calixtus Cal(vino m)ixtus, and iden- tified him with the number of the beast in the Apocalypse. It was a militant age, and the peacemaker's role was not popular. 1 The theological school of Frankfort-on- the-Oder was a centre of a peace move- ment. There it was that Bergius and Francus labored for a tolerant Calvinism, and spoke many a noble word for peace in the former half of the seventeenth century. There also Pelargus seconded their efforts, and was a powerful irenic influence. It i Henke, Georg Calixtus und seine Zeit, Halle, 1853, and art. in Herzog-Plitt ; Doweling, Life and Correspond- ence of G. Calixtus, Lond., 1863; Gieseler, iv. 584 ff. (Smith) ; art. in McClintock and Strong, ii. 30 ; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii. 401-404, and notes. 110 CHURCH UNITY is interesting to think of this school at Frankfort-on-the-Oder standing in the same relation to the Reformed Church and to the Lutheran as Union Theological Seminary stands to the Old and New School Presbyterians, — dedicated to peace and compromise from its very origin. It was this same Frankfort group which first gave publicity to that golden word : " In necessary things unity, in things indiffer- ent liberty, in all charity." This is the noble motto of the Evangelical Alliance. We are indebted to Richard Baxter for in- troducing this sentence to the English world, which he does in his "True and Only Way of Concord of All Christian Churches." 1 There Baxter says : " Were there no more said of all this subject but that of Rupertus Meldenius, cited by Con- raclus Bergius, it might end all schism if well understood and used, viz. : Si in neces- sariis sit tcnitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae, — Unity in things necessary, Lib- erty in things unnecessary, and Charity in both, would do all our work." A professor in Union Seminary has the honor of first 1 London, 1680- IREN1C MOVEMENTS HI tracing this word to its origin. In the summer of 1887 Dr. Briggs searched through the libraries of Germany until he found a copy of the anonymous book, "Paraenesis Votiva," which is the source of this immortal sentence, and which book is referred by Bergius to Rupertus Mel- denius. The probable date is 1627. As Professor Briggs remarks, the author does not belong to men of fame. He passed away in obscurity. But his words remain, to fructify in a better soil, and to bring forth fruit in a better age. And this word of his should keep his name in everlasting remembrance. 1 John Durie was the greatest peacemaker of the seventeenth century. The same scholar already mentioned has the honor of calling the attention of the American Church to this indefatigable laborer for church union. 2 Durie, who was probably 1 See Briggs, in Presb. Rev. 1887, pp. 406 ff., 743 ff. 2 Briggs, The Work of John Davie in behalf of Chris- tian Union in the Seventeenth Century : Presb. Rev. viii. 297-309. ITere is published for the first time Durie's Summaric Relation of his Work for Ecclesiastical Pacifi- cation from July, 1631, until September, 1633, from an original manuscript of Durie, discovered by Dr. Briggs, and now in the library of Union Seminary. 112 CHURCII UNITY a Scotchman, first meets us at Elbing, Prussia, where he was pastor of an English factory. There he became acquainted with Godeman, a privy counsellor of Gustavus Adolphus. Godeman suggested to Durie that whoever should bring about a recon- ciliation between the great parties into which Christendom was divided would be the greatest peacemaker. . This remark was the turning point of his life. In 1628 he addressed a letter to the Swedish king, "for the obtaining of aid and assistance in this seasonable time, to seek for and re-establish an ecclesiastical peace among the evangelical churches." The king gave his sanction, and gave him letters recom- mending him to all Protestant princes. Henceforth he devoted his life to this work. He went to and fro between Eng- land and the continent, attending assem- blies, receiving opinions, exhorting to union, trying to bring about reconciliation of differences, and looking for a common platform on which all could stand. Some English bishops, — even Laud, then Bishop of London, — looked with great favor on his work. Bishops Davenant, Morton, and Hall gave him their views on Christian IRENTC MOVEMENTS 113 union, which were published in 1634. Bishop Davenant's statement is one of the most valuable contributions to Christian union ever published. It contains this noble sentence : " True and genuine char- ity is no less necessary to salvation for all churches and members of Christian churches than the true and entire pro- fession of sound and saving faith." Many of the most eminent divines in England gave a hearty God-speed to Durie. It is interesting to notice so early as this a sin- cere longing for Christian union on the part of many of the leading spirits both in the English Church and on the continent. A meeting of the Protestant states at Frankfort, in 1634, passed a resolution in- dorsing Durie : " They did judge his work most laudable, most acceptable to God, and most necessary and useful to the Church." In 1640 he presented a petition to the House of Commons, urging "that the blessed and long-sought-for union of Protestant churches might be recom- mended unto the publick prayers of the Church, and that his majesty with your honours advice and counsell might be moved to call a general Synod of Protes- 8 114 cnuncn UNITY tants in clue time for the better settling of weighty matters in the Church, which now trouble not only the conscience of most men, but disturb the tranquility of publick states, and divide the churches from one another, to the great hindrance of Christianity and the dishonour of re- ligion." And so he labored on through his long and restless life, having only one object, — the pacification of the churches, and their restoration to ancient unity. He was charged by William Prynne with being " the time-serving Proteus and am- bidexter divine ; " but defended himself as " the unchanged, constant, and sin- gle-hearted peacemaker." His principles were : — " (1) A full body of practical divinity, which instead of the ordinary philosophical jangling school divinity, might be proposed to all those that seeke the truth, which is after godlinesse. " (2) To abolish the names of parties, as presbyterial, prelatical, congregational, etc., and to be called Reformed Christians of Eng- land, Scotland, France, Germany, etc. " (3) To discountenance controversial writ- ings by private persons. J RUNIC MOVEMENTS 115 " (4) It is the mind of Christ that his ser- vants in all matters merely circnmstantiall by him not determined should be left free to follow their own light, as it may be offered, or arise unto them, from the general rules of edification and not constrained by an implicit faith to follow the dictates of other men." This great apostle of Christian union died in 1680, without seeing the fruits of his labors. The times were too turbulent and the age was not ripe for his pacific ideas. Gieseler says he received much more en- couragement from the Reformed than from Lutherans. He was three hundred years in advance of his age. But, as Professor Briggs says, " He was sowing the seed and preparing the germs of Christian tolera- tion, liberty, and union that have unfolded in later time and richer promises for the future.'' 1 Many of the best spirits of his time gave him encouragement, and his numerous books and his tireless labors form one of the noblest legacies which 1 For further information, see Briggs, as above ; Gieseler (ed. Smith), iv. 583-584 ; Briggs, in Schaff- Herzog, s. v. ; McOlintock, in McClintock and Strong, s. v., and the references there given. See also The Christian Remembrancer, January, 1855, where a full account is given, written from the sources. 116 CnURCH UNITY church history has bequeathed us from the seventeenth century. Hugo Grotius, a contemporary of Calix- tus, was also enamoured of the idea of a united Christendom. He differed from Calixtus in this : that while Calixtus was a stanch Protestant, and made his con- cessions not toward Rome, but toward Geneva, and contented himself with try- ing to bring the Reformed and the Luther- ans to a common understanding, Grotius turned rather toward Rome, and advocated a restored and purified Catholicism, as a common solvent of all sects, and a large fold for the peaceable meeting-place of all Christians. This strange reversion on Grotius's part to the Roman Church as the hope of Christendom, may be explained from two facts : (1) Grotius was an Ar- minian. He was delighted to find, as he thought, that the stern doctrines of Calvin were absent from the ancient fathers, that Jerome and Chrysostom and the Catholic fathers knew nothing of these tenets. This led him to a passionate rebound in favor of antiquity. (2) The iron of the Protestant intolerance had entered into his own soul. After his escape from prison IREN1C MOVEMENTS 117 he had taken refuge in France, where he was received with open arms. The cordial attitude of the Catholic ecclesiastics sof- tened the rigidity of his Protestantism. As Hallam sa}s : " The ill usage he sustained at the hands of those who boasted their independence of Papal tyranny; the ca- resses of the Gallican clergy after he had fixed his residence at Paris ; the growing dissensions and virulence of the Protes- tants ; the choice that seemed alone to be left in their communion between a fanati- cal anarchy, disintegrating everything like a church on the one hand, and a domina- tion of bigoted and vulgar ecclesiastics on the other, made him gradually less and less averse to the comprehensive and ma- jestic unity of the Catholic hierarchy, and more and more willing to concede some point of uncertain doctrine, or some form of ambiguous expression." l By ampie quo- tations from his epistles Hallam has proved this defection of Grotius. But it was in the interest of a large union. He thought the Swedish, the English, and the Danish churches might come together, under a re- vived and reformed Catholic banner. He 1 Lit. of Europe, ii. 397-398. US CHURCH UNITY was — r .v: t .- c : liss e ns i ml He wanted peace. be wrote i fchei as a statesman than a theologian. It was peace at the expense : truth ; it was pc ..: the expense of the fullest liberty of private judgment. 1 ri tins did not himself go so far as to m ke the last sacrifice of his own con- scienc by a opting the infallibility of the R m d I irch. Whether he have ne a had he lived, it is useless to in- . HissShemew - i vision, an halluci- d ti n. The hisl ry f Roman Catholicism : : the last three hundred yeais has pi ven th :. John Owen, the gi test : the Puritan divines, the Xestor of the Congregational- ists, in his n s hism, lays down a liberal platform. He holds that the true I note of the Church of C is union with Christ, " nd wherever there : man, or a body of men, who are unite 1 to Him I v living faith, and are keeping : mmandments. he or they are in com- munion with the Church ^ V "He belon: t the I hui h itfa lie," runs his noble charter, u who is unite d to Christ by the spirit, and none other." 2 He vin- : W . .- E B -- .'.I. xix. 253. I REN I C MOVEMENTS HQ dicated boldly the right of the Noncon- formist churches to exist, and yet in an irenical spirit, and as one sincerely desir- ing the union of all Christians in Eng- land. Thus in his vindication of the Nonconformists from the charge of schism, an answer to a sermon by Stillingneet (1680), he deprecates religious controversy in the interest of Protestant union, and says that in the presence of the common danger of the Roman Church the sharp words of Stillingneet are unseasonable. 1 But he had no faith in artificial schemes of union. He says : " 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 consequence of it; to think that if, by sharp rebukes, by cutting, bitter expres- 1 Works, Ed. Russell, xix. 571. 120 cnuRcn unity sions, they can drive men into such and such practices, love will certainly ensue." These are golden words, as true now as in Owen's troublous day. Owen had his own scheme of compre- hension. In his Tract on Union anions: Protestants (1680) he outlines a plan of a Larger Church of England by law estab- lished, which would include all dissenters, but exclude all Romanists. As a doc- trinal basis he would have the articles of the Church of England as explained in the public authorized writings of the Church in the days of Elizabeth and James, " before the inroad of novel opin- ions among us," to be subscribed, however, only by ministers. All spiritual affairs were to be left with the churches, and " outward rites and observances " which were not inconsistent with the supremacy of Protestantism were also to be left to the free determination of the churches. 1 But for such a lar^e scheme as this Engf- land was not then ready. Owen antici- pated the broad statesmanship of Arnold of Rugby. Richard Baxter, the great English Prot- 1 Works, Ed. Russell, xvii. G03, 604. IREN1C MOVEMENTS 121 estant schoolman, was another prophet of Christian union. Living in a most stormy and trying age, when the spirit of faction ran high, when ecclesiastical fighting was the order of the day, he was the great peacemaker. He spoke in these terms of his disappointment over the re- sult of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Their scheme was not suffi- ciently comprehensive for him. "The Christian world, since the days of the apostles, has never seen a synod of more excellent divines than this and the synod of Dort. Yet highly as I honor the men I am not of their mind in every part of the government which they would have set up. Some words in their catechism I wish had been more clear, and, above all, I wish that the Parliament and their more skilful hand had done more than was done to heal our breaches, and had hit upon the right way, either to unite with the Episcopalians and Independents, or at least had pitched on terms that are lit for universal concord, and left all to come in upon those terms that would." l Baxter's 1 Davies, Life of Richard Baxter, Lond. 18S7, pp. 101, 102. 122 CIWRCH UNITY chief objection to the Westminster As- sembly was (1) against their making pres- byterial orders a matter of divine right. This, he saw, would form another separat- ing barrier. Baxter was a Presbyterian, but would be now classed as a Low-Church Episcopalian. That is, he believed Epis- copacy to be a convenient and very ancient form of polity, though without Scriptural authority. " As to fixed bishops of parti- cular churches, that were superior in de- gree to presbyters, though I have nothing at all in Scripture for them, yet I saw that the reception of them was so very early and so very general, I thought it most improbable that it was contrary to the mind of the apostles." 1 Baxter would have had a modified presbyterial episcopate as a centre of union for all parties, and would have thrown overboard all " divine right " theories of the ministry as divisive and false. But more important still was his objection (2) to their doctrine of coercion. He saw that this would only accentuate Church divisions and embitter all parties. He says : " I disliked the course of some of the more rigid of them, grasping at a 1 Autobio^., quoted in Davies, 1. c, p. 104. 1REN1C MOVEMENTS 123 kind of secular power. They reproach the ministerial power, as if it were not- worth a straw, unless the magistrate's sword enforce it. What then did the primitive Church for three hundred years? Till magistrates keep the sword them- selves, and learn to deny it to every angry clergyman who would do his own work by it, and leave them to their own weapons, the Word and spiritual keys, and, va/eant quantum valere ftossunt, the Church will never have unity and peace. I disliked also some of them that were not tender enough to dissenting brethren, but too much against liberty, as others were too much for it, and thought by votes and numbers to do that which love and reason would have done." l This is as noble a testimony for toleration as it is for Chris- tian union. Baxter wrote to John Howe, the illus- trious chaplain to the Protector, in reply to Howe's statement that the Protector desired Church union. Baxter says: " The Lord Protector is noted as a man of a catholic spirit, desirous of the unity and peace of all the servants of Christ. 1 Autobiog., quoted in Duvies, 1. c, p. 105. 1:24 CUURCU CX/TY Wc d -ire notliing in the world (at fa so much as such a di o : but more is to be for uuion and peace. Would he. first, but take some healing principles into his own consideration ; 2d, when he is satis- . expose them to one or two leading men of each pai dian, Presbyterian, Congregational. Erastian, Anabaptist), and privately feel them, and get them to a consent; 3d. and then let them be printed, to see how they will h (with the reasons annexed): 4th, and then let a free-chofl n ssembly be called to agree upon them, he would ex- ceedingly oblige and endear all nations to him: and I am confident, as I live, that by God's blessing he may happily accom- plish so much of this vrill- 3 - - fctle us in much peace, and heal abundance of our But B rter ha 1 fallen on evil d . modine I a mo _ ■ ■ - $ented as a basis of union to the Savoy Conference in 1661, after the 1 1 Qu Life of Baxter, p. 175. JRENIC MOVEMENTS 1 26 1 by the Episcopalian party, and their :nr of a Btifl I the whole unad . ! liturgy, which has itchword of the Church of ;• since, was buttressed by A'-i of Uniformity, and tb holy and . the i bnrch of Christ in England — Baxter among them — were thrown out of their parishes, and many of them left to perish in hunger, in exile, or in prison. Some years before this, in 1653, how- ever, Baxter had formed the W Association as a practical exhibition of union. He describes it himself : — " The main body of our Association were men that thought the Episcopal Presby- terians and Independents had each of them some good in which they excelled the other two parties, and each of them some mistakes ; and that to select out of all three the best part, and leave the worst, was the most desir- able (and ancient) form of government." * We may close our account of Baxter's contribution to this history by his ringing 1 Church Concord, Preface, London, 1691, quoted by Briggs, Barriers to Christian Union, in Preab. Rev. viii. 452. 126 cnuRcn unity appeal to come together on the one Chris- tian basis of faith, hope, and charity. "Why, sirs, have not Independents, Pres- byterians, Episcopal, etc., one God, one Christ, one Spirit, one Creed, one Scripture, one hope of everlasting life ? Are our dis- agreements so great that we may not live together in love, and close in fraternal union and unity ? Are we not of one religion ? Do we differ in fundamentals or substantial ? Will not conscience worry us ? Will not posterity curse us if by our divisions we betray the gospel into the hands of the enemies ? And if by our mutual envyings and jealousies and perverse zeal for our several conceits, we should keep open the breach for all heresies and wickedness to enter, and make a prey for our own poor people's souls ; Brethren, you see other bonds are loosed; Satan will make his advantage of these daises of licentiousness. Let us straiten the bond of Christian unity and love, and help each other against the powers of hell, and join our forces against one common enemy." 1 As a probable ontgrowth of Baxter's able pleas and efforts for union, a move- ment among the clergy in Cambridgeshire 1 Christian Concord, London, 1653, p. 96, quoted by Briggs, Presb. Rev., 1887, p. 454. IRE NIC MOVEMENTS 127 during the years 1656-1658 may be cited. Dissociated from any compulsory measures and based upon a purely voluntary prin- ciple, it reflects an earnest spirit, which in many souls longed and Labored during a tempestuous period for spiritual unity and harmony. From a very interesting and detailed account 1 of the proceedings of this association of ministers we make a few selections illustrative of the purposes which brought them together : — " Jan. 20 : 1656 : At a meeting at Cambridge it was upon the question resolved : "1. That wee all meet monthlie, & every time wee will bee all present, unlesse a rationall account can bee given to the con- trarie, & that wee will meet Feb. 3 : 1656. "2. That in our meetinges wee will keepe our selves close to our proper busines, not medling with the civill affaires of the comon- wealth. " 5. That wee all will agree to the same order & method in administration of ordi- nances even in circumstances as far as pos- sibly wee can. 1 For full .account, see The English Historical Re- view, Oct., 1895, pp. 744-753, with introductory para- graph by Rev. H. W. P. Stevens. 128 CUURCII UNITY "Feb. 3: 1656. Mr King of Fulmire moderator. • «.... " 3. That wee determine as neere as wee can to promote an uniformitie in catechisinge. "April 7: 1657. "1. Whatsoever wee have doe or shall resolve upon wee agree to put in practice till publike authoritie shall settle some things more particularly. "All scandalous persons hereafter men- tioned are to be suspended from ye sacrament of the lords supper. " Any person, father or mother, that shall consent to the marriage of theyr child to a papist or any parson that shall marry a papist. Any person that shall repayre for any advice to any wiche wizard or fortune teller. "May 5: 1657. "1. As to the article in the ordinance for scandall relating to those that repaire to Wiches Wizard & fortune tellers &c. It was this day advised that wee shall account all those guiltie of that scandall who repaire to any that are famed to bee such, though not convict by law. "2. Also wee advise that they who use 1RENIC MOVEMENTS 129 spellcs or charmes, or pretend to use them thereby to deceave others, shall bee accounted guiltie of Bcandall. « June 2 : 1G57. "4. Wee judge it may bee convenient that the agreement of the Ministers of this Countie touching Catechising, private instruc- tions of our people, & administration of sacraments bee in some way made publikely knowen to our people." A very interesting movement was that to bring together the Gallican and English churches. But this must now be passed over. Lupton has just made it the subject of an instructive monograph. 1 Robert Hall (cl. 1831) was an earnest advocate of Christian union. His words are fully equal to those of the latest zealot in this matter. He says : — " Nothing more abhorrent to the principles and maxims of the sacred oracles can be con- ceived than the idea of a plurality of true churches, neither in actual communion with each other, nor in the capacity for such com- munion. Though this rending of the seamless 1 Archbishop Wake and the Project of Union (1717- 1720) Between the Gallican and Anglican Churches. London, 1896. 130 CHURCH UNITY coat of our Saviour, this schism in the mem- bers of his mystical body, is by far the greatest calamity which has befallen the Christian interest, and one of the most fatal effects of the great apostasy foretold by the sacred penman, we have been so long famil- iarized to it, as to be scarcely sensible of its enormity j nor does it excite suspicion or concern in any degree proportioned to what would be felt by one who had contemplated the Church in the first ages. Christian soci- eties regarding each other with the jealousies of rival empires, each trying to raise itself on the ruin of all the others, making extra- vagant boasts of superior purity, generally in exact proportion to their departures from it, and scarcely deigning to acknowledge the possibility of obtaining salvation out of their pale, is the odious and disgusting spectacle which modern Christendom presents. The evils which result from this state of divi- sion are incalculable. It supplies infidels with their most plausible topics of invective ; it hardens the conscience of the irreligious ; it weakens the hands of the good, impedes the efficacy of prayer, and is probably the principal obstruction to that ample effusion of the Spirit which is essential to the renova- tion of the world." 1 1 Works I. 289. See Princeton Ess., 2d Series, p. 237. IRE NIC MOVEMENTS 131 This passage reveals Hall far in advance of the general sentiment of his day. A beautiful irenicon was that of an American lawyer of the Reformed Church, Abraham Van Dyke, Esq., who in 1836 published a book entitled, "Christian Union ; or an Argument for the Abolition of Sects." It was dedicated to the Rev. David Abeel, a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church in the East. It is an earnest and pious plea for Christian union. Van Dyke had also the faith to believe that such a union would in fact soon be realized. This was a more daring faith sixty years ago than now. He considers every objec- tion, and modern discussion has added but little to his systematic and large-minded presentation. The irenic proposals of Van Dyke met with serious opposition from two influen- tial sources. One was the opposition of the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Ken- tucky, Dr. B. B. Smith. 1 He welcomed the book as an evidence of dissatisfaction with the present position of Protestantism, but he had no faith in the peaceable and 1 Review of Van Dyke's book in Literary and TheoL Rev. ed. by L. Woods, Jr., Sept. 1835. 132 cnuRcn unity catholic plans of Yan Dyke. These plans he ridiculed by calling them simply an " agreement that Christians shall not bite and devour one another." On the con- trary, said Bishop Smith, it is futile to talk about Christian union until all Christians are agreed in one outward form of church organization. " What sort of union," says Bishop Smith, " among the followers of Christ should be proposed ? Shall they be called upon to unite in some way or another as they now stand divided ; or are they bound to agree in one outward form of Christianity? For our part we most ex- plicitly avow our conviction that every attempt to put a stop to the dissensions and subdivisions which distract the Church must forever prove futile, until Christians are agreed in one outward form of Chris- o tianity. To talk about union in feeling and spirit, whilst there is disunion in fact, is about as wise as to exhort those to love one another between whom occasion of deadly feud exists." Bishop Smith himself was a Hig-h Churchman. He considered "one of the grand mistakes of the Reforma- tion a separation from the Church instead of reformation in the Church." This hos- IRE NIC MOVEMENTS 133 tile reception of the Dutch Presbyterian layman's pacific propositions on the part of this prelate of the Protestant Episcopal Church was a distinct intimation on the part of that church that nothing could be considered on this subject unless the adop- tion of the Episcopal Church constitution was laid down as the first plank in the platform. Another powerful voice lifted against the too hasty adoption of the peace proposi- tions of Van Dyke was that of the " Prince- ton Review." In an article published in 1836 the Review, then conducted by its founder, Dr. Charles Hodge, expressed hearty sympathy with the aim and spirit of Van Dyke's book, but could not go so far as the enthusiastic author for these reasons : — ■ (1) Truth is greater than union. In such an amalgamation of Christians some would have to lay aside their convictions, or keep silent respecting them, and either course would be disloyalty to the God of truth. " Every attempt to reconcile differ- ences among Christians which involves the relinquishment of truth, or a compromise with important corruption, either in doc- 134 CHURCH UNITY trine or worship; or giving countenance to what is deemed an injurious departure from what Christ has commanded, is un- doubtedly criminal and mischievous." (2) Such an amalgamation of the churches, on the principle that their di- versities in doctrine and order, as long as they do not affect the fundamentals of religion, are of little account, and ought not to permit the most intimate union, would discourage that "searching of the Scriptures " and that earnest " contending for the faith" which is expressly com- manded as a Christian duty. (3) But such union, even if attained without dishonest sacrifice, would do no good. It would not produce love, and without love it would be a curse. The nearer the Christian denominations come to each other, the more they would fight. This writer does indeed express the hope that all the Reformed churches in the United States holding the Presbyterian system will be united in organic union, and that some alive then (1836) would live to see the day, but he says that even such a union as that he would strenuously oppose, because the conditions of friend- IRENIC MOVEMENTS 135 ship and love which would make the anion a blessing did not then exist. In conclusion tins able writer lays down the following principles : — 1. All who profess the true religion in its essential characteristics belong to the Church catholic, and ought to be so re- garded by all who believe that Christ is one and his religion one. 2. Concurrence in some outward form of Christianity is not essential to Christian union, or to the communion of saints. 3. Yet everything that tends to divide the body of Christ or its members from each other is sinful. 4. The day is coming, and is not far dis- tant, when the people of God will be so united both in form and spirit that they will feel that they are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. 5. A formal coalition of all sects into one body under one name would not neces- sarily be Christian union. 6. The spirit of sectarism must first be slain, and the spirit of charity become tri- umphant in every part of the Church. 7. Attempts to break down the barriers which now divide Christians before such 136 CHURCn UNITY baptism of the spirit of love is given are of no use. 8. Those churches which stand aloof from other churches on grounds not sup- ported by the Word of God are guilty of schism. This applies to the Roman and to the Episcopal churches. 9. There will be at length a pouring out of the Holy Spirit in a measure never known since Pentecost, which will prepare the world for a consummation devoutly to be wished, — the formal and real union of all Christians. 1 It remains to speak of irenic movements in smaller sections of the Church. There was first the effort to bring to- gether the Presbyterian or moderate party in the Church of England and the Congre- gationalists. Baxter was one of a noble band who saw that underneath all differ- ences there was a real unity. " There is no such difference," said Thomas Hill, a Presbyterian, in 1645, " for aught I know, between the sober Independents and moderate Presbyterians, but if things were wisely managed, both 1 See Princeton Essays, 2d Series, N. Y., 1847, pp. 236-258. IRENIC MOVEMENTS 137 might be reconciled; and by the happy union of them both together, the Church of England might be a glorious church, and that without persecuting, banishing, or any such thing, which some moutlis are too full of. I confess it is most desirable that confusion (that many people fear by Independency) might be prevented ; and it is likewise desirable that the severity that some others fear by the rigor of pres- bytery might be hindered; therefore let us labor for a prudent love, and study to advance one happy accommodation." l On the side of the Congregationalists Jeremiah Burroughs advanced these mag- nanimous sentiments. It is notable to see that the finest and highest of recent words for the universal peace of Protestant Chris- tendom are but the echo of these proposals of the seventeenth century. " Why should we not think it possible," says Burroughs, " for us to go along, close together in love and peace, though in some things our judgments be apparently differ- ent one from another? I will give you 1 An Olive Branch of Peace and Accommodation. Lord Mayor's sermon, 1G45. London, 1648. p. 38. Quoted by Briggs in Presbyterian Review, viii., 451. 138 cnuRcn unity who are scholars a sentence to write upon your study doors, as needful an one in these times as any ; it is this : Opinionum varletas, et opiniantium unitas non sunt ao-vo-Tara, Variety of opinions and unity of those that hold them may stand to- gether. There hath been much ado to get us to agree; we laboured to get our opinions into one, but they will not come together. It may be in our endeavors for agreement we have begun at the wrong end. Let us try what we can do at the other end ; it may be we shall have better success there. Let us labour to joyne our hearts, to engage our affections one to an- other; if we cannot be of one mind that we may agree, let us agree that we may be of one mind." 1 In answer to this flag of truce the Pres- byterian ministers of the Provincial As- sembly of London in 1653 sent forth the following : — " A fifth sort are our reverend brethren of the New and Old England of the Congrega- tional way, who hold our churches to be true churches, and our ministers true minis- i " Irenicum to the Lovers of Truth and Peace." London, 1645. p. 255. Briggs as above, p. 451. IRENIC MOVEMENTS 139 ters, though they differ from us in some lesser things. We have been necessitated to fall upon some things, wherein they and we dis- agree, and have represented the reasons of our dissent. But we here profess that this disagreement shall not hinder us from any Christian accord with them in affection ; that we can willingly write upon our study doors that motto which Mr. Jer. Burroughs (who a little before his death did ambitiously en- deavour after union amongst brethren, as some of us can testifie) persuades all schol- ars unto: ojnnionum varietas, et opiniantium unitas non sunt do-tWara. And that we shall be willing to entertain any sincere motion (as we have also formerly declared in our printed vindication), that shall farther a happy accom- modation between us. "The last sort are the moderate, godly Episcopal men, that hold ordination by pres- byters to be lawful and valid ; that a bishop and a presbyter are one and the same order of ministry, that are orthodox in doctrinal truth, and yet hold that the government of the Church by a perpetual moderatour is most agreeable to Scripture pattern. Though herein we differ from them, yet we are farre from thinking that this difference should hin- der a happy union between them and us. Nay, we crave leave to profess to the world 140 CHURCH UNITY that it will never (as we humbly conceive) be well with England till there be an union endeavoured and affected between all those that are orthodox in doctrine though differ- ing among themselves in some circumstances about Church government." 1 Unhappily, the England of the seven- teenth century was too stormy for the fruition of such lofty desires. But on this continent twenty-four years before the Presbyterian Assembly of London is- sued that remarkable paper, there had been realized exactly the union for which these men were praying. At Salem, in 1629, the Plymouth Congregational Church and the Salem Presbyterial-Episcopal Church were united in one blessed fellowship, — a happy omen for this continent. 2 An important union movement of mod- ern times was that which resulted in the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia, in 1817. So far back as 1720, Christoph Matthaus Pfaff, chan- 1 Jus Divinum Minister ii Evangelici. London, 1653. Briggs, p. 451. 2 Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, pp. 471-477. Faulkner, On the Early History of the New England Church, in Reformed Quarterly Review. IRE NIC MOVEMENTS 141 cellor of the University of Tiibingen, who had been influenced by Pietism, proposed a union between these two churches in Iris " Alloquium Irenicum ad Protestantes." Their points of union in doctrine, he said, were far more important than their points of difference. His thesis found no favor. Even such conciliatoiy theologians as Weismann of Tubingen and Mosheim of Helmstadt opposed it. Forty years later another seed was dropped. Heumann of Gottingen, a Lutheran, wrote a treatise in which he defended the Reformed doctrine of the Supper, and asked why the two churches could not come together, the Reformed holding in abeyance their doc- trine of predestination, and the Lutherans their doctrine of the Supper. In 1764 this pamphlet was brought out by Sack, after the author's death, and fell like a bombshell in grave and quiet Germany. Many Lutherans replied to it. Others considered it favorably. 1 At any rate it prepared the way for the determined effort of King Frederick William III., stimulated by the memories of the Refor- mation which came to him at its three 1 Kurtz, Church Hist., Macphersou's tr., iii. 109-110. 142 church unity hundredth anniversary, to bring together the two churches. On the 2d of May, 1817, he addressed a letter to Bishop Sack and Provost Hanstein, in which he said, " I expect from you propositions for the easiest and most appropriate manner of unit- ing the two slightly divergent confessions." But it was easier to say this than it was to bring about a union. However, after many conferences and concessions it was brought about in 1821 — its outward sym- bol being a new liturgy in the preparation of which the pious king himself took part; but which many, both Lutherans and Re- formed, thought too Catholicizing in its tendencies. This objection, however, was partially obviated in a revised edition in 1829. The result of the union was that there existed in Prussia, Nassau, Baden, Rhenish Bavaria, Anhalt, and Hesse the United Evangelical State Church, with a common government and liturgy in which these parties abode peaceably together, namely, the Lutherans, and the Reformed — both parties holding to their peculiar doc- trines, but not considering these as points of division and strife — and a real union party, which had abandoned in reality or IREN1C MOVEMENTS 143 in effect a belief in these doctrines. But it was a question whether this union has been a great benefit to the German Church. Brought about by the will of the king, not meeting any deep need or response in the hearts of the people, it naturally alien- ated those earnest souls who held firmly to the Confessions, to whom doctrinal loyalty and strictness of faith and denominational love were the life of their life. A church cannot afford to part with these. The men in whom the Lutheran tradition was a living reality remained out of the union, and the harsh measures of the king alien- ated multitudes. Steffens was deprived of his professorship and died in exile. Guericke, of Halle, ministered to a small company of Lutherans in his own house, and was for that deprived of his professor- ship. Many clergymen were imprisoned. After 1840 these harsh measures were in- termitted, and the king consented to the formation of a Lutheran Church, which was constituted in 1841. Then there were three churches instead of two. And yet there was something noble in the thought of the Prussian king in consolidating the churches of his dominions, thus facing a 144 cnuncn unity Catholic unity with a Protestant unity, and there was something catholic and liberal in the way in which this was car- ried out. Neither party was required to renounce any essential doctrines. 1 An irenic movement which has affected the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, and thence of the world, was that which brought together the great churches, — the United Secession Church of Scotland and the smaller and yet influential church, the Relief Church. 2 The spirit of the Re- lief Church was eminently catholic. Its founder, Gillespie, had been trained by Doddridge, and he, Gillespie, could say, " I hold communion with all that visibly hold the Head, and with such only," a sentiment which reminds one of the famous declaration of his great contem- porary, "Wesley, who said, "I desire to form a league, offensive and defensive, 1 Kurtz, Ch. Hist., Macpherson's tr. iii. 178 ff . ; Ha- genbach, Ch. Hist., 18th and 19th Cents., Hurst's tr., ii. 350 ff. For later separations, see Kurtz, iii. 280 ff. 2 It is not necessary now to go into the story of the origin of these churches. Dr. William M. Taylor has given a very clear statement in his article on the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, iii. 901 ff. IRE NIC MOVEMENTS 145 with every follower of Christ." In 1847 the union of these two churches was ef- fected with great enthusiasm. The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland has been one of the most aggressive and spiritual churches of Scotland. In 187G the con- gregations of this church in England united with the English Presbyterian Church, making the Presbyterian Church of England. In 1852 one of the Seces- sion churches of Scotland — that in which Dr. Thomas McCrie was the leading light — united with the Free Church of Scot- land, and in 1876 the Reformed Presby- terian [Cameronian] Church — or a large majority of it — also joined its fortunes with the Free Church. Although there have been strong counter currents driving the Scottish Christians apart, there have been also strong centripetal movements bringing them together. For ten years negotiations were carried on by the Free Church between herself and the Reformed, the United and the English, Presbyterian churches with a view to union. But a small minority threatened to secede from the Free Church if the project was carried through, and it was wisely abandoned. 10 146 cnuRcn unity The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has formally approached every Presbyterian Church in Scotland with the expression of her " hearty Avillingness and desire to take all possible steps, consistent with the maintenance of an establishment of religion, to promote the union of such Churches." Her efforts have as yet proved fruitless, but we must echo the words of the Rev. Pearson McAdam Muir, in his admirable brief history of the Church of Scotland, that " it is hard to believe that it is impossible to find a basis of agreement on which, without abandonment of principle or compromise of honor on either side, the now opposing communions may take their stand, and thus avert a long, unhappy, and disgraceful strife." 1 In speaking of Scotch Presbyterianism we naturally think of the daughter on this side of the water. In 1837 the Presby- terian Church of the United States was unfortunately broken into two divisions — commonly called the Old School and the New School. But it was impossible that churches having the same creed and dis- i The Church of Scotland, Edinb. and N. Y. 1892, p. 94. 1RENIC MOVEMENTS 1-17 cipline and not divided by any profound sectional and political feeling could remain forever apart. A new generation came that knew but little and cared less about the old causes of strife. Churches and pastors united in the ordinary ways of fraternal intercourse. Then the mighty struggle for the Union baptized the northern churches into a oneness of feeling. Patriotism be- came the hand-maid of religion. Why should not the Church be one as the nation is one? In 1862 the Old School Assembly proposed a stated annual and friendly interchange of commissioners be- tween the two General Assemblies. This was met by a hearty response in the friend- liest spirit by the New School Assembly. At a meeting of the Old School General Assembly at Newark in 1864, a number of ministers and laymen met together to con- sider organic union. This non-official body adopted a statement in winch, among other tilings, they said : — " It is believed that the great majority in each branch sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures, and approve the same government and dis- 148 CUURCII UNITY cipline. On this basis we may reunite, mutu- ally regarding and treating the office-bearers and church courts of each branch as co-ordi- nate elements in the reconstruction. There are difficulties in the way of repairing the breaches of Zion, which must be met and overcome by well-considered methods, and in a spirit of forbearance and prudence. Re- union cannot be accomplished, nor is it to be desired without the restoration of a spirit of unity and fraternity. We believe this spirit exists and is constantly increasing. That which should first engage the attention of the friends of reunion should be to find out how far unity of sentiment and kindness of feel- ing prevail." The same" year at Dayton, Ohio, that great scholar and irenic spirit of whom not only Union Seminary bnt the whole Amer- ican Church has reason to be proud, Dr. Henry B. Smith, as retiring Moderator of the New School Assembly, preached a ser- mon in which he presented the subject of organic union "with singular felicity and power." In 1866 both assemblies met at St. Louis. There they mingled together in religious worship and in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Nothing could with- stand the spirit that made for fraternity. TRENIC MOVEMENTS 149 The Old School Assembly passed resolu- tions looking toward organic union, and appointed a committee to act with a similar committee of the New School Assembly. It was a thrilling moment in the history of the Church of God when the Rev. Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, of Washington, and the lion. Lincoln Clark, of Detroit, walked into the New School Assembly bearing these overtures. With equal cordiality and readiness the New School Church met the advances of the Old School brethren. In 1867 a plan for reunion was submitted by this committee to both assemblies for discussion during another year. At this juncture an ominous voice in dissent was heard. In the Princeton Review for July, 1867, Dr. Chas. Hodge objected to the plan on the ground that the New School Church does not now receive and never has received all the doctrines of the Cal- vinistic system in their integrity, and that, therefore, union would not only be inexpe- dient, but morally wrong. This was met by an article in the American Presbyter- ian Review for October, 1867, by Dr. Henry B. Smith, denying this charge, and attempting to prove that the sense in which 150 CHURCH UNITY the New School Church received the Con- fession was precisely that claimed as the true one by Dr. Hodge ; viz., the Calvin- istic or Reformed. Both articles were published in pamphlet form, and scattered far and wide, and both, says the late Dr. Wm. Adams, " tended to the same result, — the conviction of the substantial oneness of both bodies in the receiving and adopting the Confession of Faith in the true, honest, liberal, common-sense and Presbyterian significance of those words." The bases for reunion as amended were adopted by the assemblies in New York in May, 1869, and were submitted to the presbyteries. At an adjourned meeting of the two as- semblies the next November in Pittsburg, the returns from the presbyteries showed an overwhelming majority in favor of re- union, and in May, 1870, the first reunited assembly met in Philadelphia amid the rejoicings of innumerable saints and the congratulations of sister churches all over the world. 1 1 Presbyterian Reunion Memorial Volume, N. Y. 1870, esp. pp. 246-406. This volume gives all the facts and documents, and selections from addresses, etc. See also J. F. Stearns, Historical Sketch of the Reunion, in the American Presbyterian Review, July, 1869. IRENIC MOVEMENTS 151 Another great union movement is that which brought together all the Methodist churches in Canada. In 1873 there were six Methodist churches in Canada; the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the Eastern Provinces, the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Ontario and Quebec, — two churches historically and organically separate, — the Methodist New Connection Church in Canada, the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada, the Primitive Methodist Church in Canada, and the Bible Christian Church. The note for the bringing together of these bodies was struck by Rev. Dr. E. H. Dewart, in 1870. In the fall of 1870 an informal meeting of representatives of dif- ferent Methodist bodies was held at the house of the editor of the " Christian Guar- dian," Dr. Dewart, in Toronto. From the beginning this powerful journal threw the whole weight of its influence on this side. In 1873 a plan for union was adopted by the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Upper and Lower Canada, by the New Connection Methodist Conference, and by the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of the Eastern Provinces. The first united General Conference was held in Toronto, 152 CHURCH UNITY September, 1874, — the first time in history when laymen were accorded equal repre- sentation in the chief court of any large Methodist Church. The name chosen for the united Church was the Methodist Church of Canada. This irenic result was an object lesson which the other churches could not resist. The Ecumenical Con- ference in London in 1881 intensified the desire for union. In 1881 the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada, the Bible Christian Church, and the Primitive Meth- odist Church in Canada, merged themselves into the larger Church. Thus, where there had been six, there was henceforth to be but one Methodist Church in Canada. A grand example has in this way been set for other Methodist churches to follow. Eng- land is looking in the same direction. 1 It does not fall within our scope to treat the union movements in the Anglican, Greek, Old Catholic, and Roman churches, tending toward a union of one with an- other, or any one with all. This would form a most interesting chapter, but it would require more time than is accorded to this lecture. 1 Centennial of Canadian Methodism, Toronto, 1891. This volume gives full historical information. IRENIC MOVEMENTS 1 53 Ironic movements of great moment have been those which issued in the formation of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846; of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 ; the American Bible Society in 1816 ; the proposals of the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1886, which were reaffirmed by the Pan- Anglican Coun- cil of Bishops at Lambeth Palace in 1888; the proposals of a more catholic type sent forth by the Congregational churches of the United States in 1895; the formation of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, of which Theodore F. Seward, Esq., is the leading spirit, in 1893 ; and the formation of the League of Catholic Unity in 1895. These are all parts of a great and wide- spread movement which will not fail nor be discouraged until the churches of God are not only one in love and faith and hope, but one in a confederated, or united, or or- ganic life. When the people on a certain vessel skirting the South American coast were dying of thirst and cried for water to those in a boat passing near by, the an- swer came back: "Throw down your buckets into the water." The sufferers were sailing in the mouth of the broad 154 CHURCH UNITY Amazon without knowing it. The spirit of union is in the air we breathe, and throbs in the tides over which we float from the nineteenth century into the calmer and sweeter waters of the twentieth. IV THE CHICAGO -LAMBETH ARTICLES By the Eight Rev. HENRY CODMAN POTTER, D.D., LL.D., Bishoj) of New York THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES T HE invitation which brings me here this evening named as the topic for my consideration what are known as the Chicago-Lambeth Articles. Those articles, however, have formed the subject of dis- cussions on both sides of the Atlantic for nearly ten years, and I should be a far bolder and more self-confident person than I am if I could hope to contribute to what has already been said in regard to them any very helpful or substantial word. More than this, it may be well for me to say at the outset, that the recent action, or rather non-action, of the Chief Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church with reference to such constitutional or canoni- cal enactment as would make those arti- cles more speedily or practically effective, may well discourage any one whose rela- 158 CIIURCU UNITY tions are such as mine from urging their consideration or pressing their acceptance upon others. It would, indeed, be easy enough to an- swer to this last criticism, that any great movement advances usually by more or less unequal, or apparently unequal, steps. An idea is broached, a general statement is made, a basis of action is proposed, which to many earnest minds seems precisely what they have been waiting for. Over against them as they look out upon the future of some great interest or institution there is a situation which, in many of its most obvious aspects, is full of perplexity and peril. It cannot be denied, I think, that this is a widespread sentiment with those Avho love our common Master, and who desire the spread of his kingdom, as to-day they look out upon the manifold divisions of Christendom. A late issue of a leading foreign ecclesiastical journal pub- lishes the names and the number of new sects that have come into existence and have been formally registered in Great Britain alone during the past year. I have not the record at hand, but there were at least some half-dozen of them, and they THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 159 represent the strangest and most eccentrie vagaries of belief and practice. I shall not rehearse them here ; but one in read- ing them could not resist the exclamation, " Is tins, after all, the only fruit of all our strivings after Christian unity? Is dis- integration and not re-integration to be the history of all our efforts to unify the dis- cordant voices that profess the faith of Jesus Christ?" And when one adds to this the fact to which I have just alluded, — that a communion which, by its synodi- cal declarations, has taken a foremost place in the movement for the reunion of Chris- tendom refuses, or seems to refuse, such particular action as in one especial aspect of it, at any rate, would appear to have promised for those declarations some prac- tical force and efficacy, the situation be- comes not alone anxious and perplexing, but also not a little discouraging. For one, I am prepared unreservedly to admit the apparent force of such reason- ing ; but it must be qualified, I think, here as always, by the general consideration to which I have just referred. No great move- ment such as that for the reunion of Chris- tendom is at all likely, any more than any 160 CIIURCU UNITY other great movement which has to steer its way amid the ignorance, the prejudice, the ecclesiastical antipathies that are common to human nature, to go forward without considerable and frequent discouragements. We have to reckon with conscientious con- victions, however ignorant; we have to reckon with selfish interests, however care- fully disguised ; and most of all, I think, we have to reckon with that quite unconscious pride of infallibility, of which Latin Chris- tianity is not, it is to be feared, the sole and exclusive depositary. " The Reform- ation," says a large-minded thinker of our own generation, 1 "had rid itself of an ecclesiastical falsehood ; it had not yet seen the scholastic root of much of the doctrinal system that it established. It put the idols of its schools in place of the idols of the altar. It had not yet learned that the kingdom of God is not a meta- physical notion; it had not yet learned tolerance of opinions and essential unity among differences. This spirit was the parent of its virtues and vices together. The Lutheran was conservative, intellec- 1 Dr. Edward A. Washburn, Epochs in Church His- tory, p. 91. THE CIIICAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 1G1 tual, but without sympathy with any outside his evangelical communion. Calvin was logician, scholar, hero ; but he could banish Castalio or burn Servetus, like the malleus hereticorum of past time, and rule Geneva as if it were a cloister of Benedict. His spirit passed into his disciples ; it created Puritans, brave, conscientious, pure, yet men who could, like Colonel Gardiner, look at an Arminian as Anti-Christ, and think a surplice a rag of unrighteousness." Undoubtedly, since those days the animosi- ties of differing Christians have greatly softened, but it would be a " fond conceit " to imagine that they had ceased to exist. And, even if they had, there would still remain those other grounds of difference which represent profound conscientious convictions, — convictions which if they ever yield, must yield, not to the touch of sentiment, but to a vision, at once clearer and larger, of what is essential truth. It is because, whatever may be the discourage- ments of the hour, I believe in the growth of such a vision and of the influence and the temper that best serve to prepare the way for it, that, for one, I am persuaded that what is known as the Lambeth Dec- 11 162 CHURCH UNITY laration has not yet done its whole work for the cause of Christian unity ; and that those who have welcomed it as a true irenicon amid the divisions of our modern Christianity have not been misled by an iridescent dream nor the ignis fatuus of an impossible theory. Let me name the reasons that lead me to this conviction. I. And first among them I would put the deepening conviction among all Chris- tian people of the evils of division. If what is known as the Chicago-Lambeth Declaration has had no other value, it will always be, I think, a cause for profound thankfulness on the part of those who were first of all concerned in it that it stands distinctly for that. Some of us can very well remember a mode of argument which was common enough among our fathers, and which went to show that the so-called divisions of Christendom were on the whole a distinct advantage to the cause of Christ and the growth of his kingdom among men. I do not hear that argument any more. Dismissing, if one chooses, what has been called the vulgar and sordid criti- cism of our ecclesiastical divisions which shows how they involve an enormous waste THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 1G3 of men, and money, and resources of every sort, there still remain other and graver considerations concerning which I thank God there is now a far larger concurrence. The favorite image which likened the various sects and fellowships into which Christendom is divided to so many regi- ments or battalions in a great army, must needs face and explain, if it can, the wide- spread hostility of those battalions to each other. The fact, of which any one familiar with the history of smaller or larger com- munities may easily assure himself if he chooses, that quite as often as otherwise the growth of any given communion is simply at the expense of some other close beside it ; — the further influence of a con- dition of things which issues too often in creating in the minds of Christian people an attitude of which a critical and some- what thrifty balancing of the claims of rival fellowships is often a predominant characteristic, — the wretched heartburn- ings, rivalries, misrepresentations, and animosities which are often the most conspicuous fruits of our divided Chris- tendom, — these are facts which we can- not longer deny and winch we attempt in 164 cnuRcn unity vain to disregard. As one consequence of them I think we must all be conscious of the existence of what may be called a kind of " competitive Christianity," in which the strife is not to "provoke one another to love and to good works," but to provide such superior " attractions " as are in danger, often, of turning the sanctuary into a place of more or less distinctly theatrical display, and the worship and the teaching into a practical exhibition of the shopkeepers' legend, " We study to please." What a pitiful travesty of the august offices of religion, and of the solemn business of the sacred ministry ! And yet, there are those who do not hesitate to de- fend it as imperatively demanded by what they are wont to call " the exigencies of the situation." It is because of this, I am pro- foundly persuaded, that so many devout minds are turned to-day to consider that essential evil which is the source of such a condition of things, — the evil of our mani- fold divisions. II. Again: there is yet another con- sideration that with many is even more influential to-day in the hopeful direction I have indicated. When one comes to read THE CIUCAGO-LAUBETII ARTICLES 165 the story of the infant Church as he finds it told in the New Testament, he very Boon becomes sensible of what I may call — using the word in the sense in which one uses it of a poem or a picture, — its tender and sympathetic atmo- sphere. There were divisions in the early Church as there were heresies and rivalries ; but, brooding over all, and finding expression in utterances of singu- lar love and devotion, in acts of rare and constant self-sacrifice, there was an atmos- phere which revealed a common purpose, which prized the common fellowship, which strove for the common good. It breaks out in such expressions as those of the great apostle who, speaking of those others who preached Christ from motives more or less single or worthy, yet exclaims, " But every way Christ is preached, and therein I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." Have we ever considered how tremendous must have been the attractive power of this pervading sentiment of loving and self- \ effacing enthusiasm — oiL_a spirit tha t could not forget .£hak_iha whole was larger than any part, and that it was for the triumph of the whole that all alike 1G6 CHURCH UNITY were to strive ? Here at last was some- thing which put mere selfish gain, or success, or triumph in its rightful and inferior place. Here at last was some- thing which thrilled the hearts of those whom it had taken captive with a love larger than their own race, or land, or family. Here was something which, speak- ing of the Fatherhood of God, made it easier for men to believe in it, because they saw that one of its chiefest fruits was the true brotherhood of man. How far our modern sectarianism has produced any such effect upon Christian disciples themselves, I will not undertake to say, — but how far that same temper of dissension, division, mutual hatreds and hostilities has been instru- mental in discouraging the approaches and chilling the enthusiasm of people outside of any Christian fellowship is a matter concerning which I am persuaded thought- ful Christian people are not longer in any .doubt. They see in it something that, now< / at length, must be reckoned with, and they I are turning with a concern daily more eager I and anxious to find, if they may, its remedy. "III. Yet another influence, which has been most graciously and powerfully at THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES lf>7 work among us in the interest of a reunited Christendom, lias beep fee deeper a nd mora intelligent study of the Holy Scriptuivs. There is no more favorite method with un- belief, when it would discredit the religion of Jesus Christ, than to point out how its disciples, differing as they do concerning questions which are, or which have been, claimed to be of the most vital importance, have been wont to appeal to the same Book, and often, strangely enough, to the same words in that Book. That meagre and superficial reading of the Sacred Writings which has dealt with them as one would deal with a fetish or a charm, — which has led one, for instance, to submit the gravest questions, in some moment of supreme per- plexity, to the answer to be gotten out of the Bible by opening the volume at random, — this it must be owned, and that too often by those .who ought to have been examples in another and more excellent way, has been a characteristic of men's use of Holy Scripture in all circumstances, and in none more frequently than in those which are concerned with matters of theological or ecclesiastical controversy. That the Bible should be treated as literature ; that men 168 CHURCH UNITY should he scrupulously careful always to turn upon it those lights which come from a knowledge of the times in which, and the men by whom, it was written ; that its right interpretation must depend among other things upon the growth of a language, the progress of a civilization, the influence of an environment; and that, until we have inquired concerning these, the last thing that we are warranted in doing concerning a certain text or book, or institution, is to dogmatize about it. This conclusion, which has dawned so late and slowly upon Chris- tendom, is coming more and more, thank God, to be a dominant conviction. Whether or no there is a new spirit in the pulpit, there is a new situation in the pews. Never was there a generation in which, notwithstanding all the froth and frippery of our lighter literature, there was so large a proportion of thoughtful men — and of women too — who were reading and think- ing and inquiring for themselves concern- ing Holy Scripture. I mentioned not long ago, in a quite promiscuous company, Canon Mozley's "Ruling Ideas of Early Ages," and I confess I was genuinely surprised to find how many of those present had both THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 169 seen and read it. When we are making a clever argument for our little view of Apostolic Succession, or of Baptism by one mode alone, or of the primitive form of Church government, or of some fragmentary aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation, it will be well for us to remember that, sitting in the pews there may easily be some quiet man or woman who watches our cheap and mechanical manipulation of isolated texts, or our utterly unscholarly reading of some disputed passage, with a silent surprise, in which humor and sorrow are mixed in equal proportions. Such men and women are, though they know it not, the heralds of a new era. That era, however superstition, or ignor- ance, or inherited prejudices may hinder it, will bring with it a new and nobler concep- tion of the office of the Holy Scriptures, and. of the way in which men are to deal with them. And when it shall come, one of its best fruits will be that new and larger light in winch will be set this whole subject of Christian unity. Heretofore we have magnified our differences; henceforward we shall rather magnify our agreements ; and reading the story of the dawning life \ 170 cnuRcn unity of the Church in the light of those various faiths and civilizations and philosophies amid which it came to have its beginning, we shall see how Catholic and not Angli- can, or Roman, or Genevan, was its basis, and how heavenly and not earthly was its spirit. IV. And this brings me to another con- sideration which demands our grateful recognition in connection with the subject of Christian unity, and that is what I may \ call the growth of the historic instinct. I No one can review the origin of those vari- ous religious bodies, which have arisen since the Reformation, without recognizing how significantly they witness to an awak- ening of some of the deepest spiritual in- stincts in those who were responsible for their inception, and, no less, to a profound conviction that some one aspect of Christian faith or practice was, more than any other, or all others, essential to the integrity of the Christian fellowship. But from such a position the step was not always a long one to another and very different position, — a position which substantially disassociated them from other and no less essential char- acteristics of the Christian Faith and Order, THE CHICAGO LAMBETH ARTICLES 171 and which thus, ere long, maimed that Faith and practically disowned that Order in the interest of a single dogma. In this aspect of it, the history of the disintegration of Christendom is at once startling and tragic. The historic Unity was openly and recklessly flouted. The historic Faith was at once narrowed and perverted ; the his- toric Order, corrupt, tyrannical, grotesquely distorted often in its practical exhibitions, was dises teemed and finally disowned. And so there has come to pass the spectacle of a divided Christendom, of a household no longer at unity in itself, rent and torn with a thousand frivolous dissensions, a spectacle of blindness and self-will for the warning of all future generations. But along with such a condition of things, or rather as a consequence of it, there has come the awak- ening of another and very different spirit. That study of Holy Scripture, to which I have just referred, and along with it of the records of those times which followed most closely upon the days and the acts of the apostles, has been fruitful to our own gen- eration as to none other that has preceded it. The historic method, which has been found so helpful in other departments of 172 cnuRcn unity inquiry, has been invoked, as never before, in our own. I may not venture here to recite, even in the most superficial way, the story of its achievements, but I venture to think that the longer and more carefully they are studied in connection with the subject of Christian unity, the more abun- dantly will they vindicate the positions assumed in what are known among us as the Chicago-Lambeth Articles. What, now, were these positions ? Let me venture, at the risk of repeating what may be abundantly familiar to most of you, to recite not only the terms of the " Quad- rilateral " itself (as for convenience it has been called), but those others by which it was introduced. It was in the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the year 1886, that the House of Bishops united in these words : "In pursuance of the action taken in 1853 for the healing of the divisions of Christians in our own land, and in 1880 for the protection and encouragement of those who had withdrawn from the Roman obedi- ence, we here assembled in Council, assembled as Bishops of the Church of God, do hereby solemnly declare to all whom it may concern, THE CniCAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 173 and especially to our fellow Christians of tit e different communions in this land, who, in their several spheres, have contended for the religion of Christ: " (1) Our earnest desire that the Saviour's Prayer ' that we cell may he One ' may, in its deepest aud truest sense, be speedily fulfilled." This plainly enough admits that what- ever inner and spiritual unity among differ- ing Christians might exist, that unity for which Christ prayed — unity " in its deep- est and truest sense " — did not exist. "(2) TJiat we believe that cell who have been duly baptised ivith Wetter in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church." This no less clearly affirmed or implied that a sole and supreme claim to member- ship in the Holy Catholic Chinch could not be made by any one branch of that church, to the exclusion of any baptized person, even though not of its own fellowship. " (3) That in things of hitman choice, relating to modes of worship), and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready, in the spirit of love and hitmility, to forego all preferences of their own" 174 CHURCH UNITY This indicates a clear recognition of the apostolic distinction between things of primitive and permanent appointment and tilings ahidfyopa. "(4) That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co- operating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visible manifesta- tion of Christ to the world." These words explicitly recognize that there is such a thing as schism ; but no less clearly point out that its remedy is not to be found in a narrow and mechanical uni- formity. And then the Declaration pro- ceeds : — "But, furthermore, ice do hereby affirm that the Christian Unity now so earnestly desired by the Memorialists (i. e. , those who had memorialized the General Convention on the subject of Christian Unity) can be restored only by the return of all Christian Commun- ions to the principles of Unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence ; which principles we believe to be the substantial deposit of THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 175 Christian faith and order committed by Christ and His Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the common and equal benefit of all men. " As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the restoration of unity among divided branches of Christen- dom, we count the following, to wit : — "(I.) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the re- vealed Word of God. " (II.) The Nicene Creed as the suf- ficient STATEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN Faith. " (III.) The two sacraments, — Bap- tism and the Supper of the Lord, — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and of the elements ordained by hlm. " (IV.) The Historic Episcopate, lo- cally ADAPTED IN THE METHODS OF ITS administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church." Now then it will be seen that the force and meaning of these several bases or con- 176 cnuRcn unity ditions of Christian unity turn largely upon what is understood by the preliminary phrase " the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence." It has been just at this point that the growth among us of what I have called the Historic In- stinct has been of such great value, as it is destined to be, we have reason to believe, to an increasing degree. Scholars in in- creasing numbers have turned to the Holy Scriptures, to the writings of Clement of Rome, of Ignatius, of Polycarp, who all three had been disciples of one or the other of the apostles, and had been made bishops by them in various cities, — to the witness of Irenseus, Bishop of Lyons, of Clement of Alexandria, of Origen, Cyprian, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, to the teaching of the Apostolic Canons, and of the councils of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalce- don, Antioch, and Carthage, and have discovered running through them all a general consensus whose significance cannot be mistaken. "Though those to whom authority in the government of the Church was bequeathed had to make further ar- rangements from time to time to meet the THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 177 exigencies of events, — the astonishing in- crease in number, the adaptation of the Church's mechanism to its rapidly multi- plying requirements, the settlements of differences that arose, and the decreeing of fresh ordinances from time to time for the further preservation of order, the unity of the body, and the purity of the faith," — the significant fact is that those in such authority, as Kettlewell has pointed out, "scrupulously kept to the same lines as had originally been laid down and received by them ; the essential and fundamental principles and character of the Constitution were strictly observed ; and no departure from them was permitted. If any attempt were made to infringe upon them or to dis- regard the ordinances upon which the foundations of their government had been established it was the duty and charge of one and all to stand up for them and to resist any encroachment or violation." No less clear has it been to the candid student of ecclesiastical history that this primitive unity in the maintenance of the rule and government of the primitive Church had pre-eminent reference to three things, — the due appointment of rulers, 12 178 CIlURCn UNITY the clue and cheerful submission of the governed, and loyalty to scriptural and apostolic doctrine, without additions or perversion. When the Christian Church began to lose these, she began to lose the secret alike of harmony and of strength. Her hour of weakness came when rival teachers and rival dogmas contended with one another for supremacy; and when, breaking with its historic past, Latin Chris- tendom undertook to erect upon the ruins of primitive Christian unity the insolent structure of the papacy the moment of dis- solution was at hand. We deplore to-day the divisions of Christendom, and rightly ; but no such cleavage between primitive order and modern Christianity was ever made as was made when Rome usurped a place which her Lord had never given her, and so taught every feeblest and most self- willed sect in all the world how to read into the Word of God its own meaning, and into the order of his Church its own self-seeking way. Our hope, nevertheless, I repeat, whether for her or for ourselves, is in the candid study of beginnings ; and I do not see, in this connection, how any student of history THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 179 can bo long in doubt as to what its lesson is concerning that which has been the great source of all our differences, the com- munion of the Roman Obedience. "That body is indeed to many, many minds," as Dr. Edward Washburn has impressively phrased it "a source of vague terror, to many others a miracle of power which compels a reluctant admiration. It seems to stand, after all the battle of these cen- turies, as impregnable as ever; it covers this new world with churches; it plots new leagues in Europe ; and while it has lost Italy, and its power is crippled in Austria, Spain, and France, it challenges the strength of Germany. It could compel obedience even in the face of an old Catholic secession; it draws its converts from Protestant England, and dreams of the triumph, there as everywhere, of Ultramontanism. But surely if we soberly read history we need not be disturbed by such facts. It is not strange that such a power survives. It lives first of all by its traditional hold on the religious faith and habit of a large part of Christendom. We are never to forget that the Protestant Reformation was confined almost whollv 180 CIIURCII UNITY to those German or Saxon lands where there had been a freer revival of science and letters and a national life never so fettered by papal despotism. Nor is it strange that the old attachment to the Church of the past, the memories of the noblest age of scholars and saints, the Church entwined with all the faith and habit of the people, should remain. The Old Catholic movement is the best com- mentary on this fact. We cannot look save with love and reverence on men like Dollinger and Hyacinthe who could not, till the last, give up their ancient religion, but dreamed of a reformed papacy; and we must be content that such move- ments shall work themselves out in such sober ways as may bring reform without destruction. It may be long before Rome shall lose this power which it has by its antiquity, and its seeming unity. It lives as the mistletoe, which keeps its own green bloom by the sap it draws from the trunk, but strangles the gigantic oak at last. But aofain it has its life from the influence it exerts beyond its own communion over the minds of many in a time of religious quarrel and unbelief. It seems to rise before the THE CIIICAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 181 eyea of doubting men as the only repre- sentative of the unbroken Church. Every age since the Reformation has seen the examples of conversion from Protestant ranks. We have seen it in our own day, in noble minds like Newman, seduced by the dream of Catholicity, and dismayed by the growth of religious freedom. It can blind the scholar by its pretended historic claims and dazzle the imaginative by the charm of its ritual. There is a compact strength in its organization which makes it far more effective than our free Protes- tantism. It has the drill of an ecclesiastical army. It has the might of an unscrupulous logic. ... It proclaims the infallibility of one head ; it allows no freedom of opinion; it utters its historic falsehoods with the voice of the Ecumenical Council; it knows no code of faith or morals save implicit obedience. There is in all tins a power which overawes the world. New- man tells us in his Apologia, that, even in Ins unenlightened, evangelical youth, he fell into the habit, he knew not how, when he went into the dark of making the sign of the Cross. It was a pre-Roman instinct. And his passage into the Roman commu- 182 CHURCH UNITY nion was just this. It was his magic charm in his intellectual dark, and it is the Apologia of almost all who have followed him. The Roman obedience was not a faith, but an escape from thought. And we need not therefore imagine that it is very soon to be extinguished. It may be long before it loses its hold upon the half instructed intelligence, the imaginative and the credulous worship of the world." But we turn back from this essentially modern or mediaeval conglomerate of audacity and superstition, and sectarian intolerance, to that clear and simple portraiture of the Catholic Church which is given to us in apostolic history, and we feel instinctively that, sooner or later, that simpler and nobler ideal is to be redeemed out of the rubbish and error of the past and to be the ruling force in that which shall be the Church of a gloiious future ! Least of all need we fear for the essential unity of the Church of God. " We must resist," as that brilliant essay upon the Latin age from which I have just quoted reminds us, 1 " the discords and the loose unbelief which now as always 1 Washburn, Epochs in Church History, p. 74. THE CIIICAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 183 threaten us. We must maintain the sym- bols of our faith and the historic order of the Church. But we are never to forget that the unity which was destroyed in that Latin Church was one that cannot return. ... I know no stranger book than the Irenicon of Dr. Pusey, in which, after proving with the wealth of learning that modern Rome has substituted Mariolatry for Christian worship, he proposes an alli- ance with it on the basis of Trent, as if the Mariolatry he exposes were not the very development of Trent." Rather than this " we want the unity that consists in an open Bible, a sound intelligence, a better learning, a reasonable faith. Our fathers bought it in the fires of Smithfield and baptized it in the baptism of their blood, and we will keep it forever. The strength of the Church lies in this, that it works with the forces of a Christian civilization." And the whole tendency of those forces is in the direction of the closer alliance of all Christian people, the steady elimination of the sources of mutual misapprehension, the frank recognition of excellencies in those from whom we are separated, and the economy of wasted forces, upon the basis 184 CHURCH UNITY of a mutual co-operation, which is mutually trustful, mutually respectful, and most of all mutually loving. It is because the earliest days of Chris- tian history are the days which teach us this lesson most clearly that, more and more, the better sentiment of our genera- tion is turning back to study their story and to seek to recover their spirit. V. Finally, I look with hopefulness to the coming of a day which shall bring with it a recovery of primitive unity and the building of a Christian fellowship at once Scriptural and comprehensive, upon some such basis as the Chicago-Lambeth Declaration, because of my profound faith in the mission to the whole world of a Christianity which is not Greek or Ro- man, Oriental or Italian, but Anglo-Saxon. I can readily anticipate at this point how some one may say, " But is not such an expectation an illustration of precisely the blunder upon which you have just been so freely commentating? You have told us that one reason why we may not look for the reunion of Christendom along the line of the Roman Obedience is because it stands for a type of Christianity which is not THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 185 Catholic but local, and what you have not told us church history has abundantly shown ; viz., that the earliest divisions of Christendom came to pass not alone be- cause of the strife of this or that branch of the Church of Christ for supremacy, but also because of that centrifugal force in all national churches which tended to drive them apart into merely national camps." Of this tendency it must be owned that the history of the Eastern Church is an impressive illustration. Its dominant type to-day is not Greek but Russian. Apart from the Russo-Greek Church the churches of the East have little life, little learning, little aggressive power. And no one who knows the East, and Russia also, can be insensible to the fact that in that mighty empire the fea- tures of a narrow and intolerant national- ism have overlaid those others which in the earlier history of the Eastern Church made it the witness of a primitive faith and of the apostolic temper. Yet these are the two great types of national Chris- tianity to-day : the Latin, arrogant, intol- erant, unscholarly; the Greek, narrow, slumbrous, and unaspiring. " Surely, 1 ' it 186 CHURCU UNITY may be said, "the Church of the future, whatever may be its domiuant character- istics, will be free from the tint and taint of any merely national characteristics." But at this point there salute us certain significant facts which we cannot wholly ignore. One of them relates to what Dr. Bushnell called the out-populating power of Anglo-Saxon Christendom, especially since the days of the Reformation. The other day, in London, a civic corporation gave a dinner to the governor of the British Colony of Queensland. The banquet was co-inciclent with that explosion of Ameri- can hostility to Great Britain to which I may not more particularly allude ; and one of its most conspicuous guests was the Colo- nial Secretary of the English Government. In a speech made on that occasion Mr. Chamberlain alluded to the stress which had been laid in public criticisms of Eng- land's foreign policy upon what had been called the "isolation of England," and remarked, not, I apprehend, without a somewhat pardonable complacency : " The statement of our adversaries is quite true. England is an isolated power ; but she has always thriven upon her isolation. She is THE CIIICAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 187 without foreign alliances, but she has the devotion of all her children ; and it may interest her friends in Germany [one can imagine the savage resentment with which the foolish young Emperor of Germany must have read the words], to know that the territory of the single British colony whose governor we are honoring to-night is tlnee times as large as the whole Ger- man Empire ; and that of such colonies Great Britain has to-night no less than seven," — in other words, that the Colonial Dominion, alone, of Great Britain is no less than twenty-one times as large as the whole Empire of Germany. Now, then, have you ever stopped to consider what such a statement as that, made by a government official, scrupu- lously careful as to his facts, really means? Have we ever stopped to consider the larger question, — what that is which this amazing reproduction upon all sorts of foreign soils of the Anglo-Saxon really stands for? There is no fact, so far as my observation goes, so significant and yet so little appreciated in all our modern history as this. Think how much older the civilizations of the Latin races are 188 CHURCH UNITY than that of this complex type which for want of a better name we call the Anglo- Saxon race. Think of the history of the progress of Christian civilization, as com- pared with that which the English people have achieved. They were Spaniards who first came here, we say, and gave Christianity to the Western Hemisphere. What has become of Spanish Christian- ity in this northern continent, and what, as a moral, intellectual, or spiritual force, is it worth to-day in the southern ? What impression has French civilization made upon Algeria, or Russian upon Turkey, or German or Italian upon Asia Minor or Africa? The donkey-boy who runs at your stirrup in the streets of Cairo speaks, next to Arabic, the tongue of the Greek or the Tuscan; but English ideas, aspirations, fashions, traditions, are those of which he knows the most. When the Queen of England walks abroad she leans, not upon one of her ow T n sturdy Islanders, but upon the arm of an Indian servant from Bombay. Go to the country from which her favorite servant and sub- ject comes. The old traditions, the old religions, the old prejudices and animosi- THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES L89 ties are still there. But, penetrating them all in a silent and most singular way, arc those other ideas and traditions which are transforming her courts of justice, which are recreating her social order, which, in one word, arc making of the modern Anglo- Indian one of the most interesting and promising studies in the whole racial prob- lem of the future. It is the same thing that we find in Africa, in Kamchatka, and in Japan. In this last nation the remarkable transformations which have come to pass have been the effects of a longing not for an English but for an American type of civilization, we are told. Yes, but what is the American type of civilization, after all, but the Anglo-Saxon type ? We may change the scene, but the language, the laws, the literature, the tra- ditions are substantially the same. And these illustrate, whether in the old world or the new, a remarkable quality of adap- tation like which I do not hesitate to say there is nothing else in all the earth. It is a quality which will not be confined or shut in, and which has made the whole round world somehow conscious of the existence and sensitive to the touch of 190 CHURCH UNITY Western civilization, as to none other that can be named. Now, then, have you ever stopped to consider of what this is the prophecy in the religions history of the world? The basis of character in a nation is to be found in its moral ideas. The basis of moral ideas is to be found in a people's faith. It is true that in the great essen- tials of faith the nations of Christendom are one. But the grasp with which those same essentials are held, the hold which they have upon the common life of the people, the effects which they produce in conduct and character, are quite another matter. We have seen in other races and people than our own, however we may honor their fidelity to doctrinal form alas, a strange alienation of the popular life from the spell of their inner meaning. We have seen a divorce between precept and conduct so radical and so habitual as gave us a new sense of those tremendous words, " The letter killeth ; it is the spirit that giveth life." We have seen the Word of God, as you may see it in the Coptic Church to-day, sealed up in a mas- sive and richly decorated casket, but never THE CUICAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 191 by any chance opened and read for the teaching and guidance of the people. We have seen a system of morals such as that of Alfonso da Liguori accepted as the in- terpreter of duty for whole races of men. And all the while, too, we have seen the growing arrogance of a priesthood and the growing insensibility of the people. Do I need to set over against such a situa- tion the story of Anglo-Saxon Christian- ity during the last three centuries ? Not extravagantly did that gifted voice from which I have already quoted not long ago declare, " If we turn from the discords on the surface and ask what after all has been the fruit of this (later) Christianity on the real civilization of these ages, what for education, for a nobler philanthropy, for the social issues of a time that cares less for church politics than for the king- dom of Christ, — then I say, in spite of its rival sects, it is here that I recognize its meaning. ... I look on the Church as a divine fabric, but its purpose is to edu- cate the heart and life of mankind. If I go to those lands where the Reformation has soAvn its seed, if I compare with the intelligence, the private morality, the 192 CHURCH UNITY social virtue of these the conditions of the olden time, I need no better witness. Here, amidst all the strifes of doctrine or the divisions of sect, I know the real power of a religion which has renewed the conscience. I know that I shall be told of the loose growth of unbelief. But I cannot on this account blind my eyes to the reality. It was the worst feature of the so-called ages of faith that they ob- scured the moral sense of the world ; there could be no awakening of the intelligent belief, of the self-governed will. It is so to-day, and it is the noblest gift of Anglo- Saxon Christianity to mankind that it has planted religion in the conscience, and that out of it has grown the harvest of its civilization." l I know it will be said that all this may be true, but that it has very little to do with the power of such a Christianity to touch and transform the faith and life of other races than its own. But what is the larger significance of what is happen- ing among peoples and faiths which, though Christian, have seemed most alien 1 Dr. Ed. Washburn, Epochs iu Church History, p. 100. THE CHICAGO-LAMBETH ARTICLES 193 from our own? At Constantinople there is a college of the faith and order — so far as it is committed to any particular ecclesiastical order — which, unless I am mistaken, is that for which this seminary stands. It was my great privilege to visit it, not long ago, and to spend an evening under the roof of the rare man who is at the head of it. "We are not seeking," said Dr. Washburn, "to w T in these Roumanians, Armenians, Bulgarians and the rest, to abandon their own Chris- tian fellowslrips. We are seeking to send them back, as graduates of this college, filled with a new spirit, to put fresh life into their old forms." And what have been the results of that noble and remark- able work? Some of them can best be appreciated when I say that to-day in Constantinople some five pulpits, if my recollection serves me, are filled with men who are graduates of Robert College, and who are in the orders of the Greek Church, — pulpits which for a generation or more previously had been wholly silent. When I add further that at the time these facts were communicated to me, nearly if not quite every member of the Cabinet of 13 194 CHURCH UNITY Bulgaria was an alumnus of the same college, you will recognize, I think, not alone what a remarkable door has been opened to some of the best influences of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, but how re- markable would seem to be the adaptation of its whole temper and spirit in the direc- tion of the awakening and unification of Eastern Christendom. I can well understand how remote and visionary much of this will sound to one whose conception of Christian unity is that of a compact and symmetrical organi- zation in which all local and national types shall somehow disappear under the super-imposition of hard and fast formulas of dogma and usage. But of the two dreams I do not believe any thoughtful man can be in much doubt as to which is the more likely of fulfilment. The Chicago-Lambeth Articles are destined, I am confident, to survive the acrid criti- cism which is incapable of rising to an intelligent appreciation, whether of their letter or their spirit. More and more will it come to be recognized that they pre- sent not only a sentimental but an organic basis of union. More and more will it TUB CIIWAGO-LAMBETII ARTICLES 105 come to be recognized that what have been most freely faulted as their elements of weakness are really their elements of strength. They are the product of a race which, arrogant as it may sound to say so, has revealed itself to many men in many lands as having more than any other the future of Christendom in its hands. They may not bring about the result for which we all long, and to which, let me add, this honored institution and the men who are its strength and ornament have so nobly contributed, — to-day or to-morrow. But what of that ? You and I, my broth- ers, can trust Him to whom, in the words of Bossuet, " the ages of men are moments of the disc of his eternity." And, mean- time, the signs of His working are not wanting. " God is showing us as never before that the Church of his appoint- ment, the Christian brotherhood of man, is needed in its fullest strength to meet the demands of a vast and confused civili- zation. The day is past when men of earnest thought are busied only or chiefly with the questions of church polity. It is what the gospel and the kingdom of Christ can do for the solution of the growing 196 CHURCH UNITY riddles of society, the inequality of caste, the purifying of the deep corruptions of our time, the overgrown luxury, the intricate diseases, physical and moral, the curse of serfdom, and (let me not be afraid to say it here ! ) the curse of war, the promotion of peace and of international union." Are we to solve these problems by sneering and railing at one another? The whole heart of Christendom cries out, in its better moments, against such a monstrous anomaly. May God hasten the day when, through your prayers and labors and sacrifices, and mine, it shall cease to be ! THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT — A WORLD-WIDE NECESSITY By the Rev. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D. Pastor of the First Congregational Church, Montclair, N.J. THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT — A WORLD-WIDE NECESSITY. A NGLICANS, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and all branches of the Christian Church which put emphasis upon the episcopate, begin arguments in favor of unity by emphasis upon the doc- trine of the Church; while descendants of the Puritans emphasize the doctrine of the Spirit. Consequently the former favor Church unity, while the latter plead for Christian unity. A few Episcopalians teach that Christian unity must precede Church unity; while some descendants of the Puritans grant that Church unity must precede Christian unity. Into this discussion we are not led by our subject. I pause only to observe that, in the sense in which Paul used it, the saying " first that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual" contains a profound 200 CHURCH UNITY truth, and yet there is another truth still more profound. The basis of the natural is the spiritual. A more exact statement of what Paul meant would be, first, the spirit- ual ; then the spiritual in its manifestation through the natural ; then the spiritual freed from the limitation of the natural. Behind all development is a spiritual force. The ideal of the Church will not be real- ized by its being united in one body, obe- dient to one human will, and moving as one mass : the ideal of the Church will be realized when its members are harmonious, not because in one organization, but be- cause filled with one spirit. The only power which really can unify is spirit. Unity which is not first spiritual is only formal, has no vitality, and cannot endure. It is our duty to pray and work not only for Christian unity, but also for the unity of the Church of Christ ; but in my opinion that object will not result from Lambeth " Quadrilaterals," National Council Arti- cles, or any other purely mechanical devices. Such declarations may help the cause by stimulating discussion, and they may hin- der it by obscuring the real question at issue. Something vital and vitalizing is\ THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 201 f required. The one Church will be an or- Aganism, intensely alive, and an organism / is never made; it always grows. In this ^-ease the order must be, first the spiritual, and afterward the natural or visible. This large and complex problem has many fac- tors, only a few of which we can hope even to mention. I. The student of current events cannot fail to have been impressed by the move- ment toward unity evident in all the world. For -centuries the trend of things I was toward individualism. That has not lost momentum, but it is now met by a co- ordinate movement toward unity. The desire for a united Church is one manifes- tation of a growing longing for a united world, and that united world is beginning to take shape in our time. The most re- markable fact in contemporary history is the progress which the nations have al- ready made toward what we might call a /"United States of the World" if it had i not already been named " the Kingdom of God." The idea of the unity of all nations is no idle dream. There is a movement among groups of nations toward a limited unity. The 202 CIIURCH UNITY many German kingdoms have been merged in one German Empire ; the petty Italian states, ruled by miniature sovereigns, have given place to " United Italy ; " the pro- phetic statesmen of Great Britain antici- pate imperial federation which may bind the British Islands, Canada, British Co- lumbia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in a closely articulated empire, with common language, history, religion, which will move together in all imperial projects. Russia is slowly but surely reach- ing her arms around nearly the whole of Asia, and when the Siberian railway is com- pleted, Persia, and possibly even China, will be subject to the Northern autocrat. Among nations the word of the hour is unity. This movement is more impressive when it is studied somewhat in detail. Armies and navies are glaring at each other as if eager to fight, but no one dares to begin. In the meantime railways are shortened; trains fly faster ; steamers increase in speed ; the attractions of travel are multiplying; trips around the globe are being exploited, and more people know the world well than formerly had a smattering of information THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 203 about one land. The first Atlantic cable was laid easily within my memory; now there are many on that ocean, and many projected for the Pacific. All lands are open to travel and business. But the movement of travel and com- merce is less significant than that of thought. The same books are read in all lands. A Japanese who has never been abroad will talk to you of Hegel and Matthew Arnold, of Tennyson and Her- bert Spencer, of Beecher and Brooks, as if all were natives of Japan. Morning papers in Tokyo and Shanghai have much the same contents as those of London and New York ; while great European and American dailies have correspondents in the East. Occidental scholars are study- ing the religions and literature of the Orient, as scholars in the East the religion and literature of the Occident. These facts show that in spite of selfish statesmanship the interests of one nation /are the interests of all. We are in the midst of what may be termed a world- wide movement. The Church is affected . T>ylTIeTTeit^geist — which in this instance \ is the Holy Spirit. 201 ciiuncn UNITY II. Our second proposition has the force of an axiom: a united world cannot be conquered by a divided Church. The world is becoming one, and the Church must therefore close its ranks. It will be well here to observe some things not in- cluded in this idea of a united world. A common language may not immediately result, but it is evident that as travel increases and the volume of business ex- pands, there must be a popular medium for international intercourse. History and traditions cannot be changed, and they make the obliteration of individu- alities impossible. Unity does not neces- sitate sameness, but rather the blending of things that differ. The path by which various peoples have advanced is dear to them; they cherish the memories of the great souls who have led them to victory, and do not forget that they have risen on the sufferings of heroes long dead. To take reverence for ancestry from the Japanese or Chinese would be more diffi- cult than to make the leopard change his spots. Without looking for impossibili- ties, I affirm that the nations are actually, though not always consciously, beginning THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 205 to anticipate a common future. They are like streams which have risen in many countries gradually nearing one another; by and by they will meet and swell a mighty river ; the river will be one, and yet from it will run silver lines to many and far distant mountain springs. Again, there is no likelihood of radical changes in what may be called racial nature. Men will get together, but those subtile differences of temperament and character which, in large measure, are the results of physical environment will re- main. The unity of the world will affect neither the climate nor the configuration of various lands : consequently while widely separated nations may come to- gether, it will not be into uniformity and monotony, but into the use of what be- longs to the individual nation for the common good. The highlands will still breed heroes, while the lowlands will raise agricultural and commercial peoples; but railways and telegraphs will bring high- lands and lowlands so near to one another that their interests will be the same, and. each be seen to be necessary to the other. Since individualities will not be des- 206 cnuRcn unity troyed by this unity, it follows, of course, that intellectual processes will not be materially altered. In the same land now one is a poet and another a philosopher, and in the drawing together of the races men will differ intellectually as in the past. The German and the Chinaman will be slow and steady; the Frenchman and the Japanese quick and mercurial. The difference between the mental and moral characteristics of nations is as great as ■ that between their physical characteristics. Steamers and telegraphs will affect a man's intellectual faculties no more than the color of his face or the texture of his hair. Each nation will modify every other, and the common thought will be different from what it is now precisely because what one people think all people will think ; but the intellectual faculty, which is largely the product of ancestry and environment, will remain practically as at present. If the faculty is not changed, the processes, which are the paths along which the fac- ulty moves, will not be greatly changed. While slowly but surely the people of the world are being united; while the movement must be accelerated, it is not THE UNITY OF THE SriRIT 207 toward dead and barren uniformity, but toward such a union as will allow full play to individuality and yet blend all in one great harmony. In other words, among nations there is a growing spiritual unity. If the Church would reach all classes, and breathe into them divine in- spiration, it must be a united Church. While Providence is promoting political unity, making men see eye to eye, and desire the same things, it is folly for the Church to be divided into warring camps in which one does not recognize the other, and over which sometimes are raised hostile flags. A united world calls for a united Church, a Church of the spirit, in which there may be many and great differ- ences, but in which the differences will all be dominated by a mighty and magnificent spiritual energy. From this study of the movement of events and the call of Providence I turn to ask how far this superlative idea is real- ized. I must grant that there is more real unity than facts at first would seem to indi- cate, and that what now exists is sure to grow and must not be overlooked. But my object is not to speak of what has been 208 CHURCH UNITY achieved so much as to place in clear relief the vast, and sometimes discouraerincr, task 7 o o 7 which is before all who believe in the king- dom of God. 1. The condition of that part of the world commonly called heathen. Until one has travelled extensively, and studied carefully the religious condition of the un- evangelized nations, he has a faint concep- tion of the smallness of the beginnings of Christianity, and no idea of how the Chris- tian faith sometimes reacts against itself. This is seen in the rivalry to which it stimu- lates the non-Christian religions. Buddhism and Mohamedanism are lethargic, and con- tent to be so, until inspired to activity by the presence of Christianity. Then they adopt its best methods, and fight it with its own weapons. From being mere names they become aggressive and persistent an- tagonists. It seems sometimes as if Chris- tianity were hardly more than a ripple on an infinite ocean. In Japan less than one- fourth of one per cent, of the nearly 42,000,000 of people are even nominally Christian. In China the proportion is not so large. In the Sandwich Islands the na- tives, though in touch with the Church and THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 200 its influences, seem to be dying out or largely returning to barbarism. Of the 400,000,000 in India an insignificant pro- portion of natives acknowledge the sway of the Christ. There is a bright side in the heroism of the missionaries, who are persistent, brave, confident of victory ; but the cause has not progressed far enough to justify the slightest division among the workers. And yet in every non-Christian land there is multiplicity of sects. A Wesleyan bishop from Canada is reported to have found in one small town in Japan four different branches of the Methodist Church, requiring the presence at stated in- intervals of three or four different bishops from America and Great Britain. The report is credible. I have seen in one place after another in that country Presbyterians, Bap- tists, Anglicans, American Episcopalians, Methodists North and South, Wesleyans from Canada, confusing natives by different names, insisting on insignificant details of their own organizations, when an impres- sion had hardly been made on surrounding heathenism. What do Japanese or Chinese care about the Historic Episcopate ? What must be the effect on a converted Buddhist 14 210 CHURCH UNITY when he is told that, because he has not been immersed, he must not partake of the Supper of the Lord with a saintly heroine whose name is known from one end of Japan to the other for unparalleled devotion in the hospitals, and who, perhaps, saved his life when he was wounded ? Multiplicity of Christian sects confuse those who feel the inadequacy of the old religions, and who have dared to hope that our Master might be indeed the Desire of all Nations. In the face of a united, defiant, and often blatant heathenism we present a divided camp. If it be said that there are sects among the ethnic religions, I reply: Yes, but they all make common cause against Christianity. Cursory travel through a country might not show this fact, but when one has studied the life of the people and come to understand its inner forces, he finds that the multitudes are confused and confounded because Christ seems to be divided. There is another side to this question. Those who stand between the various mis- sionary and philantliropic causes pleading for assistance and the givers in the churches must ask themselves whether this tide of THE UNITY OF THE SPIJiJT 211 entreaty will ever ebb. T confess I think it is time that this subject was faced. Is not the Christian Church being constantly and persistently invaded by agents in the inter- ests of so-called charities to the peril both of the Church and individual souls ? The plea for humanity was never more urgent, but is there not baneful and wicked extravagance in the way benevolences and missions are administered ? Have we a right to go to our people and urge sacrifice in giving when those sacrifices are not in behalf of the kingdom of God, but that senseless and wicked divisions in the Church may be continued? With co-operation the mis- sionary service of the world might be ad- ministered by a much smaller number of executive officers at vastly diminished ex- pense. In order that those who are in dark- ness may be told of Christ every Christian will gladly deny himself ; but if the effort is to supplant one denomination by another we may well inquire if extravagance and injustice have not already been carried too far. These facts, then, meet us as we study the field occupied by the foreign missionary societies: the work is altogether out of 212 CHURCH UNITY proportion to the number of missionaries; and there is poor economy in the use of both men and means. Only to intrepid faith is there hope that those millions will ever be greatly affected by the gospel. It is opposed not only by natural wickedness, but by the organized aggressiveness of older faiths, which cannot be displaced with- out a determined struggle. Workers in foreign fields are opposed by corrupt con- ditions which have behind them the sanc- tion of centuries; philosophical theories which regard the faith of Christians as absurd ; governments which look with sus- picion upon everything which teaches men to think. The contest — except for those who have faith in God — is unequal and hopeless. Yet, in spite of obstacles, young men and maidens, with courage and en- thusiasm, are volunteering for forlorn hopes in numbers greater than ever. They are taking up their work, and dying in the service as if victory were at hand. In view of these facts, is it not time for the ranks to be closed, and for everything which prevents co-operation to be swept from the Church, no matter who suffers ? 2. When we turn from the foreign to THE UNITY OF THE BPIRIT 213 the home field, to the work which remains on frontiers and in great cities, we iind a problem equally complicated. A pastor who had spent years in India said to a friend considering a call to London : " Come to London ; it is the greatest mis- sionary field in the world. I know, for I have spent years on mission ground." In many localities the cities are relapsing into barbarism. Forces are working toward heathenism here as fast as in Central Africa. Selfishness is organized and bel- ligerent. It opposes the Church at every step. It uses consummate ability in the degeneration of the State, in the exaltation of unworthy ideals of patriotism, and in its appeals to passion to embroil nations. Underneath these evils are others more elusive but not less perilous. The multi- plication of divorces tells a sad story. The home is being undermined. The young are being polluted by influences alert and obstinate because impelled by the prospect of financial gain. Opposed to those agencies of selfishness are spiritual forces working for the redemption of society; but closer study shows that those through whom the Spirit must act are not organized, often 214 CHURCH UNITY do not co-operate, and not infrequently antagonize one another. In small towns there may be a dozen different churches with seldom a union meeting, where a union communion service is impossible, and where there is not the slightest con- sultation as to how the kingdom of God may be best promoted. This is no exag- geration. When were the representatives of all the various churches in New York gathered for conference concerning the things all have in common? I venture to say that never in its history was such a meeting held. Here and there are hints of what might be. The " East Side Workers " is a suggestion of better things. But were Protestants and Roman Catholics, Episco- palians and Baptists, Methodists and Pres- byterians, Unitarians and Universalists, by their leaders ever in honest conference where differences were sunk and only this question at the front, — How may those who bear the name of Christ best do the work of Christ in this great city ? But you ask, " How could those who differ widely work in harmony ? " I reply by asking, Are there no common foes for all to fight? Churches are built where churches THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 215 are not needed, and localities where churches are needed left desolate because the interests of the denomination are put above those of the kingdom. The mis- sionary treasuries are empty and disgrace- fully in debt. I believe with proper economy in the administration of foreign and home work, without regard to denomin- ation, there would be money enough. It is not the hard times alone which have emptied the treasuries ; it is the selfish way in which great trusts are administered. The disaster is not less because the selfish- ness is not intentional. The trouble is that beneath what we call principle, in many instances, is far more of competition than of the spirit of Christ. In this connection consider the debts of the missionary societies as they were but a few weeks ago. 1 The Congregational Foreign Board, 8115,000 ; its Home Board, 177,000; the Methodist Board for Home and Foreign Work, over 8209,000; the Presbyterian Boards for Home and For- eign Work, about $300,000; the Baptist Board for Home Missions, 8190,000. 1 These figures are taken from The Independent of March 5, 1896. 216 CHURCH UNITY When the pressure of debt was heaviest, what did our vaiious soeieties do ? Instead of getting together and inquiring how mis- sions as a whole might be more economi- cally administered, they did two things : they reduced the salaries of the mission- aries and the appropriations for the work — already too small ; and they increased the number of agents whose business it is to appeal to already overburdened churches for increased subscriptions. There have been progress at home and splendid vic- tories abroad, because truth makes itself felt in spite of the methods by which its interests are often promoted, but it is time that the facts which thus far have been stated were faced and given Christian con- sideration. The question now arises, What shall be done? It is folly to describe symptoms unless remedies maybe suggested. I am addressing a theological seminary, and that leads me to say that the first thing for a Christian man to do is to set himself like a flint against the multiplication or perpetua- tion of divisions and strife. It is not within my province at this time to enter more into detail. Fortunately the mighty THE UNITY OF THE ST I HIT 217 movement throughout the world in behalf of the unity of man is making itself felt, not only among nations, but also among denominations, and in that we find the best answer to our inquiry. As the world is becoming one the Church must beeome one. The cry for a united Church is as strong and persistent as that for a united world. It has come none too soon. Against heathenism at home and abroad the mo- mentum of spiritual unity must be hurled. Not more missionaries, but more force be- hind those already in the field ! Not more places for preaching, but a mightier power j behind those already in the pulpit ! One mis- 1 sionary may do little ; a thousand in perfect I harmony will not easily be resisted. " Ah ! but," you say, " do you plead for a mass like the Salvation Army, in wdiich individuali- ties are subject to order and law ? Would you have the churches of the world under the direction of one man who should repre- sent Christ on the earth ? We had better all become Roman Catholics at once. It will make little difference who is the Pope." Shall we have one great Salvation Army ? No ! The more compact the organization and the more inflexible the rules, the surer 218 CHURCII UNITY will be the tendency for individuals to fly off on tangents of tlieir own. A Salvation Army for the world under one man might work if that man were perfect, but no such man is in sight, and never has been. As men are now constituted, such unity is neither possible nor desirable. But what i shall we have ? I plead not for uniformity of organization, but for the unity^of the | spirit — the only unity possible for per- sonalities. What do I mean by that? Exactly what our Master meant when he prayed for his disciples, " That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." When all are inspired by the spirit of Christ there will be unity of pur- pose, unity of effort, and harmony of tem- per. As fast as men are possessed by that spirit difficulties and discords will disappear. Let me give you a few illustrations of what has resulted from its absence. When Dr. Pentecost went to India in 1891, he saw that co-operation was indis- pensable to the success of his mission. He appealed to members of various churches, among others to priests of the Anglican communion and to the bishop. In reply \ THE UNITY OF THE SI' I HIT 21 9 he was told by the latter that he could not be reeognized as a Christian preacher he- cause he had not been episcopally ordained. When he suggested to one of the chap- lains of the bishop on a week day that it would be his pleasure to attend the cathe- dral on Sunday, and receive the com- munion, he was told that if he had not made his purpose known, stating that he was a Nonconformist, he might have done so, but now that he had made it known it was probable that permission would be re- fused. The matter was referred to the bishop, who answered that while he had no objection to him as a man, yet because he was an avowed Dissenter he could not allow him to receive the Lord's Supper ; that it would have been allowed ^ if he had not mentioned that he was a Dissenter — although that fact was well known before. There was the Christian name, and but little of the spirit of Christ. For many years the American Board had had missions in Turkey. It had be- come familiar with the peculiarities of the field, and could work it most efficiently. There came from that country to the United States an erratic young man of 220 cnuRcn unity brilliant ability. Against the advice of missionaries, he appealed to the American Board to help him in Iris studies, and his appeal was not granted. He then went to the Baptists ; by them was educated ; by them sent back to Turkey to found Bap- tist churches. He quickly ran his course and left the ministry ; but an element of discord was introduced where there ought to have been harmony. The newspapers took up the matter, and controversy fol- lowed. Either the man was unworthy and ought not to have been approved by either society, and so the Baptists were more anx- ious about denomination than about the kingdom; or the Congregationalists were mistaken and ought to have encouraged the man whom they refused. However the blame may be distributed, there was division, and the work was hindered. There was not the unity of the spirit. Presbyterian missionaries had long been doing superb service in Persia. Elsewhere were territories untouched by the gospel. Why did not the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel in Foreign Lands seek some unoccupied field ? Instead, with ar- rogance and exclusiveness, their mission- THE UNITY OF THE SI' f HIT 221 aries went to Persia, refused fellowship to the men who had opened it to Christianity, and by their action said thai those who had learned about Christ from Dissenters were as much in need of missionaries as it' they had never heard of Him. Thus the Per- sians were taught a religion of strife. Such assumption would make one's blood boil were it not at once pitiful and laughable. There was little of the spirit of Christ in the councils of that society when its action made that controversy possible. In many of the cities in unchristian lands where there is an English-speaking population union churches have been formed, as in Honolulu, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Kobe. In all cities that I know, except Honolulu, there are barely people enough to make one small congregation, and in Honolulu only enough for one fair-sized congregation. Public services can be main- tained only by concerted action and mutual concession. But what are the facts ? In Honolulu, first the Episcopal Church intro- duced the wedge of division; then the Methodists drove it a little deeper; and now certain Baptists are trying to in- duce the only persons whom they recog- 222 chub en unity nize as having been baptized to drive it deeper yet, and are so blind that they do not seem to see that the iron of that wedge is going straight into the body of Christ. At Kobe the Union Church is small, seating barely two hundred people, and never more than half full. By an amicable arrangement one denomination has used the building one Sunday and another the next, and many persons have attended both services. That plan is now disturbed. Again the wedge of discord is being driven into the body of Christ The sad fact is that the sects in those lands are not so many companies fighting a common foe, but starving societies competing for the patronage of a few resident foreigners, while heathenism captures more than half of the young men who go there as Chris- tians. And yet missionary societies urge the people at home to give more liberally, that the good work of perpetuating rival- ries may go on. An eminent pastor of this city recently went around the world, and returned with the sage remark, that the cure for the retrograde movement in the Hawaiian Islands would be the introduc- tion of another denomination. And he TEE UNITY OF TEE SPIRIT 223 lives to repeat his folly. I envy not the man who can go into a union church in a foreign city and raise a sectarian slogan. There is a judgment day for such persons. What is needed is the spirit of Christ — that is all. Other illustrations are unnecessary. The story of Japan, Uganda, and India is well known. Despair of missions and of Chris- tianity would be inevitable were it not for the prophetic souls who behind abuses discern the Providence of God making even human folly to praise him. But the fact that God overrules never justifies evil on the part of individuals. The foreign field is full of discourage- ments, inconsistencies, losses, scandals, not because denominations exist, but because they exist so largely for the sake of them- selves. When there is spiritual unity, only such denominations will enter foreign fields as are needed, and conference and co-oper- ation will displace division. I admire the enthusiasm of " the student-volunteers," but about half of their energy will be lost because the effect of a blow is in proportion as the force behind it is massed. Send those men out to work together, and the effect 224 oilmen unity will be sublime ; send them out to be sacri- ficed to sectarianism, and the spectacle will be a shame. I am not so foolish as to think that de- nominations serve no good purpose. When I find one class of people so narrow that they have no place for men whose minds are open to receive the fullest light on all the problems of religion, I rejoice that they can be in a little coterie by themselves, and hope they enjoy their company ; when I hear others say that they are not willing to work with this evangelist or that, because, even though the Lord approves him, they cannot, I do not waste tears over the fact that we are not compelled to keep step to their music ; when I find people who do not be- lieve in social settlements, in institutional churches, in saving men except according to prescribed methods, — who, apparently, would rather the masses were lost than reached in unofficial ways, — I am thankful that they can have a nice and proper fold all to themselves, and I do not care much how high they build their fences. Such societies are good places in which to keep and discipline those small souls who do not appreciate our Saviour's intercessory prayer. THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 225 The Lord lias had to endure many things because of the hardness of men's hearts, and evidently He will yet have to endure much more. Denominations in the past have served a good purpose, no doubt, and cannot be dispensed with yet ; hut they can and ought to be made the agents of the Spirit of God, rather than obstacles in the way of the kingdom. Before the division in the Church can be expected to give place to the world-embrac- ing unity for which we devoutly pray, there must be harmony among denominations. The better condition will follow the proper use of what we already possess. The first thing to seek, therefore, is unity of the spirit ; with that we shall realize unity of organization as soon as it is desirable. Con- cerning unity of the spirit I observe : — I. It is never the result of mechanical contrivance. All the bishops ever ordained cannot impart spirit. A million hands on a man's head may leave him without the unction from above. There is only one place whence that can come, — from the Holy One. Lambeth Conferences and General Assemblies might sit until the Judgment, and never show His presence. 15 226 CHURCH UNITY We begin at the wrong end when we ask, How may we make Christendom one? When all who bear Christ's name have re- ceived the divine life they will be one. We must stop asking how we may have a united church, and humble ourselves for a baptism of power: then the united Church will take care of itself. I II. Until there is unity of spirit, unity of /form will be worse than useless. If men are not agreed, no good can come from ' welding them together. Compel the Puri- tan to worship like an Anglican, and the Anglican to worship like a Quaker, and what will result? Make the Church a i. gigantic organization with numberless bish- ] ops, one being supreme, whatever the name, and there may be one body, but there will be no life, no divine fire. When there is unity of spirit, unity of form may be desir- able, and not until then. III. When there is unity of spirit, essen- tial unity of organization will follow of \ necessity. Spirit organizes its own body. Our Republic is the body which the free spirit of the American people has organized for itself. You may build a box around death, and the box will last until it, too, TIIE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 227 decays ; but if you build anything around life, it will be broken in pieces by growth. There is a divided Christendom, because those called Christian arc without the di- vine life. Where the spirit is, there will be essential unity. Nature is the garment of spirit. I love to observe the variety of manifestation which the spirit assumes in the physical creation, — in flowers, in forests, in grasses, in ferns, in fishes, in birds, in all the races of man, in all forms of matter, so that there is a veritable universe. The Church may assume as many different forms as the creation, but with the spirit indwelling it will always be a universe. Let the spirit of God organize its own body. IV. Only as there is spiritual unity can the kingdom of God be advanced either at home or abroad. The kingdom is the form which the spirit assumes. It was Jesus Christ, because the spirit was in him ; to- day it is all in whom the spirit dwells. What is needed is that measure of co- operation which shall prevent division of energy ; make lack of comity impossible ; never allow the building of churches, the sending of missionaries, the spending of 228 CHURCH UNITY money for sectarian purposes. Denomi- nations do not need to go, if the Spirit always controls ; and yet I believe as we now know them they will go ; at least there will be between them conference and mut- ual service, and never rivalry and ambition. When will the kingdom come ? Not until the heathen see more of Christ and less of human mechanisms ; and the work at home will fail except all branches of the Church, for practical purposes, are in perfect har- mony. Before that day dawns, what an amount of rubbish must be swept away ! What selfishness and conceit masquerad- ing in garments of loyalty to conviction must be unmasked ! World-wide move- ments require cosmic energy, and cosmic energy is the spirit which unifies and uses nationalities and individualities, rituals and creeds, for the kingdom of God. V. But suppose we have this spirit, so that the prayer of Jesus is a reality, and we are one even as he and the Father are one — what then ? Will all be realized ? By no means. The kingdom grows. The way of the spirit is the way of life, and that is a mystery. The course which it will pursue no analysis can follow; but THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 229 what some of the results will be are not difficult to determine. Where there is unity of spirit, there will be generous recognition of every Christian, without regard to the name he bears or the creed to which he subscribes. Christianity being a thing of the spirit is discovered by the spirit. Those whom God has approved, need no certification of human official. Heart answers to heart. Those who have the spirit always recognize the spiritual. Where there is unity of the spirit, there will be real fellowship. Church buildings will belong to the common Lord, and to his people ; the Table of the Lord will not be held to be the property of one sect, but the ri^ht of all God's children. If an ecclesi- astical rule keeps two ministers from ex- changing pulpits, and they have the spirit, they will find some way to let the world see that rules can never sunder those whom God hath joined together. Where there is unity of the spirit, there will be comity between denominations and individuals. No sect will think of intrud- ing where it is not needed, but each de- nomination will help the one which can do the best work. On the foreign field and at 230 cnuRcn unity home the inquiry will be, How may we manifest to all, the world's Christ ? Where the spirit dwells, discords disappear and the life shines like the sun. Where there is unity of spirit, there will gradually grow something like unity of form. Just what that will be we may not predict, but it will be such a spiritual or- ganism as will allow the very life of God, as it was revealed in Jesus Christ, to reach and influence all races and all individuals without hindrance from human selfishness or prejudice. Enough for us to know now that the unity of the spirit will surely re- sult in a growing unity of organization ; and the more pervasive the spirit, the more perfect will be the form. The unity of the spirit is a world-wide necessity. Those who exalt divisions be- little Christ. He is a sublime spiritual unity ; the world needs him, — not some poor and puny fraction of his glorious body dissevered by those who do not un- derstand him. There is money enough, and there are men enough, to send the gospel into every land, every home, every heart, and there it will be sent when the spirit of Christ is the inspiration of every THE UNITY OF THE XL HUT -_: 1 movement which bears his name. What our time most needs is aot a stronger organ- ization, ooreven simpler creeds, but Chris- tian men who dare to be true to their inmost convictions; who arc not afraid to fellowship with Jesus Christ wherever and in whomever they find him ; who will have nothing to do with traditions or rules which interfere with the direct and con- stant leadership of his spirit, and who, appreciating all that it means, have said: " I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest." Such men will be misunderstood, and probably ostracized, but in them is the ? kingdom of God ; and as their number in- i creases, that unity of the spirit which is a J world-wide necessity will become a reality as silently and beautifully as the spring- time succeeds the winter. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY .J III I llll I 0035518855 fl In hm limn t&g&ea&gSBH&& Hi H illplilM BH m Mi