CHURCH UNION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20743, 10 December 1930, Page 15

CHURCH UNION.

PRESBYTERIAN ATTITUDE.

FORWARD MOVE DESIRED.

PROPOSAL FOR COUNCIL. A strong desire for negotiations with other Protestant Churches with an ultimate viewxto some form of union was expressed by the Auckland Presbytery at its meeting last evening. The suggestion from the Assembly's committee on union, which is the Wellington Presbytery, that negotnations should be commenced with the Congregational and Methodist Churches as a first step, was rejected in favour of the resolution passed by the presbytery at its previous meeting, including also the Anglican and Baptist Churches in the invitation. The matter wa3 brought forward by the Eev. \V. Lawson Marsh, as convener of the public questions committee. Answering the frequent objection that the time was not ripe for union, he asked if the call to union on the mission field was a vague one, if the world menace of secularism was to be ignored, if the appeal of Lambeth was to be ignored, and if their union was not clearly in harmony with the mind of Christ. The time was always ripe for carrying out His will. The Lambeth Attitude. Those things in the recent Lambeth report tvhich dismayed those who had expected greater things were very small in comparison with the advances that were actually to be found in the report, Mr. Marsh said. There were the wholehearted and moving plea for unity; the extraordinary advance tvhich the bishops had made so far as the Indian scheme of union was concerned, their invitation to the free churches to renew conversations; the invitation to the Church of Scotland for unrestricted conference; and the suggestion that among the autonomous churches, such as the Anglican Church of the Province of New Zealand, they might proceed to federation or union with other non-episcopal churches on the basis of the union in South India.

There was the growing number of leading Anglican scholars who repudiated the only thing that divided them in faith and doctrine, namely the sacerdotal conception of apostolic succession. It was only a, matter of time when that would be an obsolete doctrine. A Representative Council. The statement of the Assembly's committee setting out the desire of the Church for union and its attitude toward it was adopted with slight amendment, but in place of that committee's proposal to negotiate at first with Congregational and Methodist Churches only the presbytery substituted its own previous resolution, that the General Assembly should declare itself heartily in favour of Christian reunion in New Zealand, should invite the Anglican, Methodist, Baptist and Congregational Churches forthwith to appoint representatives to a Dominion council to explore the possibilities of reunion, and should recommend presbyteries to eet up local committees on similar lines to promote co-operation and prevent overlapping. The Rev. W. J. Comrie, who moved this motion, said they should, on no account, leave the Church of England out of account in the preliminary conversations they would have toward extending; friendly relations. The statements publicly made by Archbishop Averill since his Veturn from Lambeth indicated his willingness to enter into such conversations. His own opinion was that the differences between Presbyterians and the Baptists were greater than those between Presbyterians and the Church 'I England, but that was no reason why they should not enter into closer co-opera-tion with the Baptists. The value of such general conversations as were proposed was stressed by the Rev. I. E. Bertram, who seconded the motion, which was carried unanimously.