A Reunion Movement.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 8, 19 February 1903, Page 2

A Reunion Movement.

lL f Tf ?. c Rev .- Vernon Staley, an Anglican clergyman, voices the feeling of earnest Protestants of every creed when, in his Latholic Religion, he laments the hopeless divisions which are the bane of the Reformed creeds. They are, he says, ' a cause of sorrow and shame,' 'a spectacle at which angels weep, whilst devils rejoice.' Catholics, strong in the strength of their unbroken unity, view with friendly interest the efforts made by their separated brethren of every creed to bridge over those differences which make Christianity a stumbling-block and a subject of mockery to the heathen. Those reunion movements may or may not succeed in their immediate purpose. But they will serve to emphasise the essential and vital importance of unity, and will tend to leaven the masses of our separated brethren with a truer conception of the meaning of 'one Fold and one Shepherd,' 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And the Church is sure to be the gainer. A promising movement of this kind is, as we write, afoot in Dunedin for bringing about the organic union of the Presbyterian and Congregational bodies of New Zealand. As far back as 1691 ' heads of agreement ' were drawn up between the two sections into which the English Congregationalism of the time was divided— the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists of the Savoy platform. The arrangement, however, did not work smoothly, and was soon abandoned. In 1801 a union was effected between the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists of Connecticut, in reference to the formation of churches in new settlements. The Congregationalists, however, found that it operated to their disadvantage, and they dissolved the partnership in 1852. The present movement in New Zealand is for corporate unity on a much more extended scale, and gives fair promise of such a relative success as was achieved by the divided and rival Methodist organisations in Australia some years a^o.

But such reunion movements, however praiseworthy in their motives and hopeful in their possible developments, do not reach the root of the divisions that rend the portion of Christendom that is outside the Catholic fold. The time will come, we trust, when our Protestant brethren will squarely face and adequately deal with the principle which has been, and is, the direct cause of all their interminable divisions namely, the system of iorming their religion on ' the Bible and the Bible only,' interpreted by each individual according to his own lights. Erasmus remaiked in his day that 'the interpretation of the Scriptures by individual minds has never ended in an\ thing but laming texts which walked perfectly straight before.' In the second volume of his Rationalism in Europe, Leek y says (p. 174): ' It has been most abundantly proved that from Scripture honest and able men have derived and do der.ve arguments in support of the most opposite opinions.' And thus Whitaker's Almanac for 1900 was able to enumerate 274 religious denominations in England alone, and the Times, in a leading article in its issue of January 13, 1884, could say that ' England alone is reputed to contain some seven hundrtd sects, each of whom proves a whole system of theology and morals from the Bible.' The principle mentioned above leads to chaos in religion. And the summing of it all is this: There is no logical resting-place between an infallible church and no-church.

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