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Spiritual
Unity Not An
Excuse On Division
That there is no organic unity of the whole church of
Christ to day, in the ordinary use of the words, is so
patent a fact that I have not undertaken to prove it. lt
must be conceded by every reasonable man. And it is so
conceded by every reasonable man. lend it is so conceded
by the various attempts at ecclesiastical mergers and by
the present day church federations; and also by the great
world conferences held since the War, namely: that on Life
and Work held at Stockholm, Sweden, in 1925; and that on
Faith and Order held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1927.
Fortunately for the cause of Christ there is not longer
manifest the extreme rancor and bitterness of theological
debate which embroiled the various schools of religious
thought in the past. That is to say there is improvement,
but not yet an ideal condition by any means. Nevertheless
so long as we have six or eight different churches in a
town of five hundred people, and immense city churches
facing each other directly across the street, when there
are other districts of the city comprising tens of
thousands of people quite destitute of churches; so long
as we have great heathen cities containing fifteen or
twenty different denominations, when many rural districts
are destitute of any missionary work; it is vain to say
that we have literal organic unity.
In the examination of the arguments of Baxter I think
we have shown that we do not have even a formal nominal
unity. It must certainly sound ironical to infidels and
the heathen when we sing:
"Like a mighty army
Moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading
Where the saints have trod;
We are not divided,
All one body we;
One in hope and doctrine,
One in charity."
It is at this point that we are always forced
to fall back upon the indissoluble spiritual unity of the
church—the church is one in spirit in spite of her
divisions. Therein consists her unity, all the unity she
need care anything about. In the words of Beecher quoted
above, "The union of love is the only union which
Christ sought to establish, or which is attainable in this
world."
Here we come back under the pall of hopeless division
which has hung so long over evangelical Christianity. We
are again in the old rut of despair. Since the case is
hopeless we say, "Why look for correction of present
conditions "
But in thus tacitly assuming that the inevitable fruit
of spiritual unity is organic division we are nowadays
going against the most enlightened opinion in the
Christian church. The progressive and forward looking men
of the Christian world everywhere are anxiously looking
for a way out of the maze of sectarian division into which
the flock of Christ has wandered. Witness the writings of
such men as— merely taking them at random—Dr. S.
Parkes Cadman, Walter Van Kirk, Prof. Edmund Soper, Prof.
Doremus Hayes, Bishop Charles H. Brent, Dr. E. Y. Mullins,
President Southern Baptist Seminary—really, the task
grows too monotonous, I find I should have to copy a list
of about five hundred names of the delegates to the
Lausanne Conference on Faith and Order consisting of the
most distinguished members and leaders of more than
nineteen of the largest denominations of the world,
representing nearly every prominent branch of the
Christian faith except the Roman Catholic.
So much for the opinion of those who ought to know, as
being specialists in theology and practical church
administration. Now let us examine the popular view as
trenchantly expressed in a recent novel, God and the
Groceryman:: "Our one great defense against the
rapidly increasing immorality of our nation, and the
consequent drain upon the strength of the people, is
Christianity. Enormous sums are given to this holy cause,
and the waste of this money by the preachers and managers
of the church in perpetuating their denominational
differences—which the church as a whole agrees are of no
importance—is the greatest economical crime of the age.
The spiritual and moral consequences are disastrous beyond
calculation.
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