MARCHING TOWARDS UNITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 225, 22 September 1932, Page 6

MARCHING TOWARDS UNITY.

World problems to-day demand a real sense of fellowship/ and this sense will be materially helped forward by the great reunion of the Wesleyan, Primitive and United Methodists just consummated in Great Britain. All the Churches owe a deep I debt to Methodism. At a time when religion in England was at a low ebb, and much Church life was purely formal, Wesley brought men back to the reality of conversion and personal religion. Had the authorities of the Church of England shown more appreciation of all .that personal religion stood for, the "people called Methodists" would never have left the Church. . The subsequent cleavages in the ranks of Methodism itself were, with one exception, due to differences of policy rather than to any question of doctrine, and these cleavages have now been healed by reunion into the United Church. It may be a prelude to a wider reunion of all who'profess and call themselves Christians. This hope is encouraged by the fact that at the Wesleyan Methodist Conference held recently in Manchester representatives of the Anglican Church and the Free Churches attended to offer their good wishes. The Bishop of Manchester said that if in 1791 —the first time the Conference met in Manchester after the death of John Wesley— the audience had been told that one day the president of the Wesleyan Conference would share -a hymn-book with a proud and pompous prelate, and that the two would sing together one of Luther's hymns, the Conference would have risen in confusion at such an appalling suggestion. Difficulties have arisen in promoting the unity of the Christian communions, but the present great act of union shows that these difficulties and differences are being overcome. The Churches to-day are marching towards unity, not perhaps very fast, but still with sensible progress. We have seen the reuniting of the Church of Scotland, the union of Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists in Canada, and the great movement towards unity in South India, Persia and China. The Churches must close their ranks if they are to redeem the world from misery and unhappiness. They must themselves bear witness to fellowship and the dynamic of the Gospel. Perhaps the time is not so far distant when there will be a great Congress to signalise the unity; of the Churches of God. 1,