"Help.”

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 599, 25 April 1891, Page 3

"Help.”

BE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Wb have received the first number of an excellent little journal called “ Help,” and gdited by Mr Stead. From the leading article we make the following interesting extract :—“ The Reunion of Christendom " — alas, what despair the words produce in every Christian heart 1 For there is not a Christian in Christendom who does not know that rebnion, as it is ordinarily understood, is Utterly impossible. The whole human race might go down into the flames of eternal perdition rather than Catholic, Protestant, Socinian, and Trinitarian would abate one jot or one tittle of their fine-spun theories as to the nature of the Infinite, or as tn the precise form and measure of the courtly dialect in which the creature ought to communicate with ths Creator, If by reunion of Christendom there were meant the establishment of a general agreement among Churches as to the precise fashion of ecclesiastical tippets, or the exact pronunciation of theological sh'bboleihs, we might as well abandon the task in disgust and despair. But there is no reason either for disgust or despair. These things do not matter. They correspond to the fossils, which are cold, dead, and intract- . able, far beneath our feet. We cannot combine them into the fertile mould from Which our harvests spring. They may be and arc the foundations of the earth’s crust which we cultivate and on which we tread, but the fertility of the soil does not depend open their amalgamation, You would only do miechief if, instead of manuring, ploughing, and top-dressing tbe soil, you insisted on delving deep into the bowels of the earth in order to compel the fossil deposits of rrmota epochs to share in the blending preess*. So it is with the Churches. Any atlempts to promote reunion by suggesting to gt.y one of them the abandonment of their distir.c'ive peculiarities, either of creed or ii ual, or church government, would be fatal, Reunion of that kind is much more ImpocJib’e than the federation of the secular Go«fr.|«intj p! Europe. But rauuioa of hDOiber kind is not ropossible, and it Is that kind of reunion which ought to be eecured, as it can be secured, this very year. . , Suppose pH the Churches in a moment of supreme enthusiasm were to forswear all their speou- ' alive differences, to adjust all their creeds to pffe uniform standard, to oast all their services in one unvarying mould, and every Sunday every Christian minister, clad in precisely the lame livery, were to direct the worship Of God at the same moment in exactly the same way, what progress would be made towards convincing the world that God sent Christ to save the world by love ? The world would be exactly where it was. it is pot unity of that kind that will save mankind, Wbui unity is it, then, which

alona is worth striving for ? It is the unity that is directed to practical ends, the unity which shows itself in the united consideration of common dangers, the unity of love which compels all those who are under its influence to co-operate in carrying out the enterprises which are possible to united Christendom, but which are impossible to the divided, disunited, jangling congeries of sects which at present have exclusive occupation of the ground. And that unity, most fortunately, is by no means unattainable; nay, it is being already attained, and will, I hope, henceforward be more and more attained in an ever-increasing degree of rapidity. Each Church has its own special field, its own particular congregation of individuals, with which no one proposes to interfere. But the community as a whole, the social system in the midst of which we live and move and have our being, has no Church.