FOUR CHURCHMEN AT ONE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23690, 23 December 1938, Page 16

FOUR CHURCHMEN AT ONE

“ Not very long ago I was standing in the front quad of a college in Oxford, talking to a young Scotsman (a Presbyterian) and to a Baptist minister,” said the Rev. Frank Hunt in a recent address. “ One of us remarked that the ecclesiastical backgrounds of us three presented a pretty complete picture of disunion; two members of Established Churches, living alongside each other, but not in Communion; and a dissenter from both! Someone else said, ‘We only want a Roman Catholic to complete the party.’ At that moment a French-Canadian, a Roman Catholic, came across the quad and joined us! It came to me to suggest that we should go into the chapel. We went in and knelt together at the altar; the altar where Keble, Newman, and Pusey celebrated. We knelt for a time in silence, Roman and Anglican, Baptist and Presbyterian, absolutely at one. Then one of us began to pray aloud. It was the Roman Catholic. I shall never forget that prayer. He prayed in his broken English: ‘Dear God, we give You our Churches. You give us power to—to—to—go ahead for Jesus Christ’ ”