RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 330, 17 October 1908, Page 12

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

THE CALL TO UNITY. "AN OMEN OF GREAT HOPE." In the courso of his address to the Angli can Diocesan Synod at Auckland last week, tho Bishop's Commissary (Canon Mac Murray) said:—

What was needful to be done most assuredly was that Christians of every name in this Dominion should respond to the call to unity. He did not mean necessarily to aim at present at tho corporate reunion of Christendom —any premature effort to securo that would only result in disastrous failure— but, at any rate, for the present, to cultivate tho spirit of brothcrliness. When they had developed that spirit, then they should see more clearly which wore the things that matter, and which were tho things that do not matter. He hailed with satisfaction the movement which had been initiated in this diooose by the warden of St. John's College for the cultivation of the spirit of unity amongst all who profess and call themselves Christian. Most thankfully should they welcome every opportunity which presented itself for lessoning the spirit of disunion that had done so much to paralyse tho Church of God in her warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. They had experienced threo centuries of individualism; they had begun to learn that an individualism which ignored tho claims of tho society was hurtful, They wero beginning to know that they could do more together; thoy were also beginning to catch sight of tho higher truth that they could bo more together than apart. Undoubtedly the feeling was growing that disunion w*s weakness and shame, that the ono fatal heresy was "the heresy of separations"; undoubtedly men were beginning to believe that unity would bring tho more life and fuller that tho Church needed; undoubtedly men were yearning after tho light and the life, tho demonstration and power, the glow and vision which would be ours when wo wore ono; and 111 proportion as wo were one. Tho Rev, Hugh Price Hughes once said: "You may not bo awaro of it, but we Nonconformists are now passing through our Oxford movement." When he was a boy, the Nonconformists at Home always spoke of their "chapels" and "meeting-houses"; thoy now talked of their "churches." They used to hear of the Wesleyan Methodist Society; now they heard of tho Methodist Church. The Auckland Presbytery, with but a single dissentient, had lately expressed its desire to uso a Liturgy in public worship. Theso things wero but an index of a chango in Nonconformity, which made it now glad to claim its sharo in the Holy Catholic Church. To him the change was an omen of great hope for tho solution of what was, in his judgment, tho great problem' which the Church of God had to face in. tho immediate future—the reunion of Christendom. In the present of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, nothing practical could be. accomplished in our day, so far as their Communion was concerned; but a very great deal'might bo dono with the view of bringing about a better understanding with fellow Christians of tho reformed Churches.