Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1916. CHURCH UNITY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11697, 17 October 1916, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1916. CHURCH UNITY.

DURING the last mouth or two several large religions conventions and conferences have passed resolutions or formulated plans with a view to unifying all the 'Protestant Churches of the English-speaking nations. According to a cable from America another such convention has just been held at "St. Louis at which it was announced that favourable replies had been received from most parts of the world, including the Methodist Conference of Australia. Whether the ideal towhiclfall these conferences express their devotion will ever be realised it is impossible for one not having the gift of prescience to say. Bumming up possibilities from a bird’s ej 7 e view of the most obvious difficulties one would naturally be inclined to the opinion that there is little chance of the realisation of the proposal. To note, too, the infinitesimal progress which lias been made towards complete unity during the last few s'eais one would certainly bo justified in expressing a doubt tiiat the

conferences which, as officially expressed, entertain a burning desire to constitute one great fold, really care little about the matter. More progress would have been made if they did. The subject is generally one of the stock conventions, to be made a matter of pious aspiration and prayer, but of little or no work —something for God to bring about by undertaking to mellow tbeir prejudices and create in them millennial desires without any help or cooperation on their part, but rather while they continue to blow the fires of alienation 1 and repulsion within their own souls.

But, all the same, it is high time that the churches should seriously undertake the task of unification unless they intend to allow the world to slip entirely from their hold. For the last generation or so people nave justified the disunion and sectarianism which existed by the sage maxim that competition was as necessary in religion as in matters of business. Probably the proverb was perfectly applicable to "conditions as they existed at the time of the Wesleys and the birth of dissent for religion was at a very low ebb. It is an historical fact which cannot be gainsaid, that the revivicatiou of religious life in England, which has continued to nearly down to the present day, was due to what may be called the insurgency of dissent. But the churches may now take a lesson in the efficiency of combination from the Morgans, the Steel Corporation of America, the Armors and many other vast corporations which have demonstrated the value of unity as a means of phenomenal prosperity. The necessity of amalgamation is plainly indicated, too, by the fact that many of the great religions bodies ai’e year by y T ear reporting a decline in numbers, a condition of stagnation or at the best an increase which is not in step with the increase in the population. And the reasons are not far to seek. Besides those who claim no relation to a church except at the time when they'are required to All out a census paper it would probably shock those who put their faith in figures as indicative of religions statistics to know how few man there are among church-goers, and even communicants, whose religions beliefs would pass a rigid theological examination. If 'anything could check the epidemic of unbelief and Agnosticsm it would be a great and grand unification of the religions associations of Christendom. But the prospect is very far from encouraging. There have been a few small amalamatious, but the doctrinal difficulties have been few 7 or entirely lacking. Conventions may meet and demonstrate their theoretical belief in union, but it is when creed meets creed that the tug of Avar comes. Men have died by the thousand as martyrs rather than reconcile an iota of their creed with that of their persecutors, although probably both were right and both were wrong. And it would be found, if the test were applied to-day, that vast numbers would hold 'to an insiguificeut de-

tail of their theological creed 'or doctrine with a closer grip than they would hold their life. How would it he possible, therefore, at the present time to reconcile in one fold all the dissident and centrifugal materials of which the Christian churches are composed 'i That looks like a doctrine of despair until we state what we believe to be the saving clause in the situation. It will, we b’elieve, be effected by an evolutionary process—by the gradual mellowing of beliefs aud creeds, by simplification to the , transcendently undoctrinal and vaguely theological Christianity of the Christ. Even now he would be a bold Calvinist who would preach that God selects a few for salvation and damns the remainder. And so in accordance with the great law which mellows and smooths everything perhaps a better educated and more thoughtful generation may become a more tolerant one and fail to see anything whore we now behold impassable harriers to complete unity.