The War and Unity | Page 2

influence in producing union should be
shewn. If it fails in this here, what hope, it may well be asked, can there
be that it should be effective, when its principles and motives cannot be
applied with the same directness and force? In the very assumption,
then, which underlies this whole course of lectures, that Christianity
can unite men, we have a special reason for considering our relations to
one another as members of Christian bodies, with regard to this matter
of unity.
But we are also all of us aware that the divisions among Christians are
often severely commented on by those who refuse to make any definite
profession of the Christian Religion, and are given by them sometimes
as a ground of their own position of aloofness. It is true that strictures
passed on the Christian Religion and its professors for failures in this,
as well as in other respects, frequently shew little discernment, and are
more or less unjust. So far as they are made to reflect on Christianity
itself, allowance is not made for the nature of the human material upon
which and with which the Christian Faith and Divine Grace have to
work. And when Christians of the present day are treated as if they
were to blame for them, sufficient account is not taken of the long and
complex history, and the working of motives, partly good as well as
bad, through which Christendom has been brought to its present
divided condition. Still we cannot afford to disregard the hindrance to
the progress of the Christian Faith and Christian Life among men
created by the existing divisions among Christians. Harm is caused by
them in another way of which we may be, perhaps, less conscious.
They bring loss to ourselves individually within the denominations to
which we severally belong. We should gain incalculably from the
strengthening of our faith through a wider fellowship with those who
share it, the greater volume of evidence for the reality of spiritual things
which would thus be brought before us; and from the enrichment of our
spiritual knowledge and life through closer acquaintance with a variety
of types of Christian character and experience; and not least from that
moral training which is to be obtained through common action, in
proportion to the effort that has to be made in order to understand the
point of view of others, and the suppression of mere egoism that is
involved.

These are strong reasons for aiming at Christian unity. But further there
comes to all of us at this time a powerful incentive to reflection on the
subject, and to such endeavours to further it as we can make, in the
signs of a movement towards it, the greater prominence which the
subject has assumed in the thought of Christians, the evidence of more
fervent aspirations after it, the clearer recognition of the injury caused
by divisions. I remember that some 40 or more years ago, one of the
most eminent and justly esteemed preachers of the day defended the
existence of many denominations among Christians on the ground that
through their competition a larger amount of work for the advance of
the kingdom of God is accomplished. We are not so much in love with
competition and its effects in any sphere now. And it should always
have been perceived that, whatever its rightful place in the economic
sphere might be, it had none in the promotion of purely moral and
spiritual ends. The preacher to whom I have alluded did not stand alone
in his view, though perhaps it was not often so frankly expressed. But
at least acquiescence in the existence of separated bodies of Christians,
as a thing inevitable, was commoner than it is now.
In the new attitude to this question of the duty of unity that has
appeared amongst us there lies an opportunity which we must beware
of neglecting. It is a movement of the Spirit to which it behoves us to
respond energetically, or it will subside. Shakespeare had no doubt a
different kind of human enterprises mainly in view when he wrote:
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on
to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and
in miseries.
But this observation is broadly true of all human progress. An advance
of some kind in the relations of men to one another, or the remedying
of some abuse, begins to be urged here and there, and for a time those
who urge it are but little listened to. Then almost suddenly (as it seems)
the minds of many, one hardly knows why, become occupied with it. If
in the generation when that happens desire leads to concentrated effort,