CHURCH UNION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 48, 27 February 1911, Page 7

CHURCH UNION.

PROPOSAL FAVOURABLY, RECEIVED. Bj Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright, OTTAWA, 25th February. The proposal to federate the Protestant churches has been favourably received in Toronto. PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS. In August Jast, the Canadian Methodists' Union Committee, by 44 votes to* 6, expressed itself in favour of union with the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The Presbyterian General Assembly of Canada, on the 7th June, 1910, has, by 184 votes to 73, approved of a basis of union with the Methodistand Congregationalist bodies. The negotiations for tho union of the three, churches have been proceeding for tke< last eight year. They had their origin in tho efforts that wore put forth during the years 1899 to 1903 to prevent, as far as possible, any unseemly rivalry andany waste of men and means in the mission work carried on by three ! churches, especially in the newer districts of Canada. In j1899, at the request of its Home Mission Committee, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church appointed a small committee to "meet and confer with representatives from other evangelical churches," and in 1902 the General Conference of the Methodist Church appointed a similar committee. Then a definite proposal for the organic union of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational Churches came in 1902 from the Methodist Church. Committees of the three churches, which met in April, 1904, reported that organic union was "desirable * and practicable," and the first conference was he-Id in Knox Church, Toronto, ir> December, 1904. An this meeting five sub-commitoees were appointed, charged respectively with the consideration of all questions bearing upon doctrine, polity, the ministry, administration, and law. The conference was resumed in 1905, and continued in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1909. At each conference the reports of the sub-committees were carefully reviewed 1 and revised. One of • the last acts of tho conference of 1908 was to pass a series of resolutions in which it was stated that "the organic union of tho negotiating churches is practical," that "the Joint Csmmitteo regard their work as now substantially completed," and that "in the event of the union of the negotiating churches, a still more comprehensive union may in tho future bs realised."