If Denominational Barriers Were Levelled

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 267, 6 August 1932, Page 16

If Denominational Barriers Were Levelled

t ( r AM a Presbyterian, and my Presbyterian forefathers have stood up I against a great many ritualistic practices, and perhaps against I too many of them; but what we do forget is this: that our ritual is just a channel, and it is not the channel that matters, but the water that flows into it,” said the Rev. James Reid, of Eastbourne, in a speech recorded in the “Record.” “I.look at these electric lights. I see the lamps; I do not know what they are; but I do know that lights are burning there. Ritual Is just the lamp. The great thing is thexlight that is in it. Light is the real thing, and if ritual helps to make the light shine out, then together we can have fellowship, even with people who differ from us. “ We can have fellowship with people of different denominations. I believe all the denominations all stood for something in their time. I think they all came into being for some purpose, and what they for is recognised as being a part of the truth of God to-day. “What are our various Churches, our denominations? They are homes of fellowship. They may be different in appearance and in organisation. But, after all, when you go along the street, and see different kinds of houses, you do not comment much on the house; what you want to know is whether there is any love in them, whether they are real homes. “And if to-morrow all the denominational barriers were washed away, in a very short time we should have denominations springing up again

on the same kind of broad lines, because people have got temperaments, and outlooks that differ, and prejudices, and habits. “And the people who would be to the new denominations would not be the same people who had been in the old. There are possibilities in the different denominations, and in the various congregations. There is the fellowship that lies behind, and we have got to realise that. “ When we look around on the world in which we live, when we read our dally newspapers, and realise in what a distracted age we are living,, we realise that the big thing we need is the spirit of friendship of man with man, of nation with nation, throughout the world. “ The fact of the matter is, that unless we get it, I do not really know what is going to happen to us. We are living in a world when we have to become very close neighbours, far too close, in some cases, to be comfortable, unless we can find some basis of fellowship. “Sixty or seventy or eighty years ago, I imagine that a letter to India or China took, about two months to go, and when It got there it was read only by one or two people, because in those days many people could not read. “But these are days when, if any man in the House of Commons makes a fiery or stupid speech about India or China, it is read by two millions of people to-morrow morning in their newspapers. That is the kind of a world we are living in, and it is a world in which we dare not go on living in any kind of ease unless we discover a real fellowship between man and man and nation :and nation."