ALONE WITH GOD     

Can We Have Christian Unity?

    It is one thing to desire and even need a thing, but it is quite something else to be able to obtain what one would like to have. The realization of Christian unity for the whole flock of Christ is obviously an achievement offering the greatest apparent difficulties of any of the major objectives of the followers of the good life at the present time. Division in the body of Christ has become organized into powerful and respectable factions, buttressed by the customs of ages, by the law of the land, and sanctified by historic traditions of the utmost sanctity and honor. The existence and function of divisions are justified by an ingenious theological and philosophical argument which has entered into the mental background of nearly all western Christendom.

Nevertheless there are good reasons for believing that Christian unity is possible.

The lightning has been harnessed to drive our motors, light our homes, and carry our messages over millions of miles of wire. In addition we have learned that it will carry our voices without wires, so that story, music, and song float through the air over all the whole earth, carried broadcast on the wings of electricity.

All these and a thousand more things we have done, dealing with blind Nature, who offered no cooperation at all. Perhaps it may be said that we have had less success dealing with our brother man, who can resist our efforts. Doubtless many progressive minded persons are discouraged today by the seeming slowness of the accomplishment of their heart's desire in social reform and the amelioration of the lot of the common man; but no well-informed student can be other than optimistic with what has been accomplished within the comparatively recent past.

Documents have come to light showing that Hessian soldiers were sold to Great Britain, like cattle, to fight against the Americans during our Revolutionary War. This was a common custom with many European nations in the old days. Rulers could hardly do that now.

Thousands of white men were held in virtual slavery in the American colonies, indentured servants who thus paid their passage to America. The story of American slavery, dark as it is, ought to offer encouragement to every well-wisher of mankind.

Slavery had existed from time immemorial. From the dawn of history this awful evil fastened itself upon human society. Only a little over sixty years ago did it come to an end with us. But, ancient as it was, fortified as it was by the inveterate custom of mankind, it nevertheless came to an end.

The legalized liquor traffic was an evil also, which rooted in the prehistoric era of the human race. We have not stopped all traffic in liquor; but we have stopped the legalized liquor traffic, and bid fair to rid ourselves of that age-old curse of mankind.

Seemingly impossible as is the vision of the Christian church in unity, it is scarcely more difficult of achievement than these other marvels of human accomplishment which we have noted.

Time was, in this country, when the subject of slavery was a fiery topic of controversy; we are pretty well agreed on that now.. Bitter controversies in science have been ended by the access of clearer light. Today science is pushing her borders further into the obscure and unknown than ever before; but there is very little controversy about it—and what there is is due to the fact that matters are dealt with which are so obscure that definite results cannot be sufficiently certified.

The comparative unanimity of opinion in science is due to the fact that science has no denominational creeds. If there were a school of science organized to teach that the sun revolves around the earth, and if this school were endowed with millions of dollars so that every teacher of that theory could draw a good salary and have a high place in society, is there anyone so ignorant of the world as to doubt that such a school would keep alive a division in the ranks of science? Such a school would rake heaven and earth to find evidence to make its theory have some semblance of intellectual plausibility and respectability. Suppose there were a multitude of such organizations to keep alive ancient theories. Would they not tend to divide the scientific world?

And yet, would not the passing of time finally dissolve these institutions? Would not the State legislatures finally decide that the objects of their endowments were amply fulfilled by turning these funds over to the teaching of real science, It would take time, but it could be done, no doubt.

The divisions of the Christian world do not grow out of our knowledge but out of our ignorance. We fight over the things we do not understand. Clearer light on Scriptural truth will tend to make UB harmonize more readily.

It is as certain as anything can be that many of our divisions grew up and were perpetrated by the narrowness and isolation of the Christians of another generation. The lives of our forefathers were inconceivably restricted, judged by the standards of our time. Men grew up and lived and died in the village of their birth without ever traveling twenty miles from home. Millions of them could not read a book, not even the Bible.

No wonder they devised narrow little formulas to hold that particular form of the faith that appealed to them. No wonder they fenced themselves off from all mankind by waterproof organizations that would not —as they supposed—let the world leak in, nor let their own orthodoxy leak out. No wonder they passed these ironclad corporations on to us, restricted by every conceivable provision which human ingenuity could devise against enlightenment and c h a n g e, and endowed with large funds to perpetuate them forever in the form and doctrine thought good by the men of old time.

But we are living under different conditions, in an age of universal education and travel, in an age when men fly across the United States with the speed of the bird, and talk by radio all over the world, we are sure to outgrow the narrowness and provincialism of our fathers.

During the era of Protestantism the Christians of the world were traveling upward on various sides of a mountain, walking, as it were, in a fog of ignorance and provincialism and ancient tradition. T h e y marched in companies. Occasionally they encountered other companies whom they seemed compelled to fight; and fight they did. Many skulls were cracked and many spears broken. At last the fogs began to lift and they beheld the men they were fighting had the same uniforms and belonged to the same nation as themselves. Then they quit fighting. But that was as far as they got. Now there is a move on foot to have these soldiers disband the unofficial guerrilla groups into which they have drifted and place themselves under the direct command of the General as one compact army. As they reach the sunlit plains at the top where the fogs are cleared away they are sure to do this.

I might further say that those who regard Christian unity as a menace might as well prepare to get alarmed, for the tendencies of modern civilization are all that way, regarded even from the human side alone.

The old world was an isolated and divided world. Every little district had its separate king or duke. Every few miles the traveler would encounter a different government, a different language, different costumes, and different food and social customs. All Europe was a swarming hotbed of warring princes and dukes. The ferment of division was everywhere.

There are still a multitude of civil governments in Europe; but the extent to which they have been unified is a marvel to the student of history. Compare the medley of warring princes and cities of the medieval Italy with the united Italy of today. Think also of the miracle of the unification of Germany. Both these changes have been wrought only within the last century.

Then think of the unification of the social habits, customs, and dress of the people—things which existing political organizations could not control. There you see a uniformity which astonishes every student and appalls the class of people who always " view with alarm" every indication of modern progress and enlightenment. Not in Europe only, but all over the world, educated people dress alike, eat alike, and have one science and largely one type of culture.

Just as Greek culture swept the world before and during the time of Christ, thus providing a prepared field for the planting of the apostolic church, so modern cosmopolitan culture has covered the earth and prepared the way for the dawn of the age of Christian unity. Whether we regard it as good or evil the stars in their courses are fighting against its opponents.

One does not have to be an old fogy to observe a revival of paganism in our modern industrial age. In fact I think it is the intellectuals among us who perceive this change with the clearest vision; as the old fogies are given to the mind patterns formed a generation ago, in an age more friendly to Christianity than our own. It bodes no good for the church that millions of children grow up without religious instruction, and never go to church at all, but roam the world in automobiles on the Lord's Day, or loaf at bathing beaches or some other amusement. These multitudes are taught that the doctrines of the church are exploded superstitions and that Christianity is already in a dying condition. In Russia they have turned on the church with the ferocity of a Nero. Thousands of Communists are urging the same tactics here. In addition, there are the so-called intellectuals waging a constant warfare, by hint, inuendo, and direct frontal attack, upon the Bible, the church, and every f u n d a m e n t a l Christian doctrine, from its doctrine of sex morality to its doctrine of blood atonement.

These attacks of Christ's enemies grow bolder year by year; from the yelp of the distant jackal they have grown into the roar of the menacing lion. This revival of paganism is a direct and thrilling challenge to the church to drop all its needless and provocative divisions and set itself on the aggressive defense by coming into the unity for which Christ prayed. Doubtless it will have that effect.