CHRISTIAN REUNION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 5, 6 July 1928, Page 4

CHRISTIAN REUNION

"(DEAL TO REACH FOR" BISHOP CHERRINGTON'S VIEWS The hope of reunion entertained by many Christian people was the subject of interesting reference by-Bishop Cheirington to the Waikato Diocesan, Synod on Tuesday (writes a Hamilton correspondent). He said the need of open and visible unity was great. Reunion was eminently desirable, and not to pray and work lor it was actually sinful. Bishop 'Cherrington asked what was thought of the Church of England, that branch of the Church Catholic that, Hprincing from various streams ot Christian thought, took root in the British Isles in the early days of Christianity, and which was the greatest power of good in the English-sprcaking world, and m the I world beyond that limit. "Are we," he asked, "a Protestant sect, or part of the Catholic Church ol Christ? \vo we only one of the Christian bodies or are wo a part of the original Church of Christ? ■ ■ • ' :,. _ "May it not bo that the Anglican Communion, with ita historic episcopacy, its Catholic creeds and sacraments, its liturgy, simple yet profound, us love ot the open Bible, its linn adherence to evangelic teaching and practice, its subdued yet stately ceremonial^ its love ot freedom, its ripe scholarship, its broad and Catholic comprehensiveness, will, under God, bo the instrument for the eventual welding into one of the body of Christ. ' , , "It is an ideal for every, one of us to be reaching to and studying for." _ ' Bishop Cherrington referred to the relations existing between the Church of England and the Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationahsts. He said that as far as the principles for which these bodies originally left the Church of England were concerned, there was no reason for separation on these grounds being still maintained. There seemed to be only one difficulty, to be overcome, and that was in connection with episcopal ordination. The Church could never lower its standard of belief and its rooted conviction on this matter. The churches could not remain long apart, and for years now they had been drawing together.