Reunion

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 19, 10 May 1906, Page 2

Reunion

A recent cable-message from London runs as follows :—: — 1 The Archbishops cf Canterbury and York, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Primus of the Scottish Church, and the hoa<ls of the Nonconformist Churches have addressed an appeal to the clergy, notwithstanding Ihe current controversies, for prayers on Whit Sunday for the reunion of the Christian Churche.'i. Archbishop Bourne wrote sympathising with the object, but stating that it was not in accordance with the custom of his Church to sign a joint appeal. He felt that he oould help most by working on traditional lines.' The reply of the Archbishop of Westminster (Dr. Bourne) was what might be expected from a Catholic prelate who wit-nesses with sorrow the disheartening spectacle cf dissension that exists among professing Ohristians outside the pale of the. Church's unity. Catholics look with a friendly interest on the movement towards unity which «is here and there stirring the spirit cf our separated brethren throughout the Englishspeaking world. We, for our part, wish the movement a hearty God^speed. It marks the revolt of right reason' and Christian sentiment .against the woful multiplications and divisions which have ever been the bane of the Reformed creeds, and which are the natural and predicted outcome of the principle of private .judgment in matters of faith and morals. * One immediate result of the amalgamation or fusion of many of the non-Oatholic denominations would be to diminish, in a measure, those unhappy divisions of the Christian name which have led to the injury of true religion, exposed Christ's work to the mockery of the infwlel and the scoin of 11>e pagan, and seriously

hampered the spread of the Gospel among those who, in the foreign mission-field, sit in darkness and the shadow of death. The ultimate result may be the acquisition, by our separated brethren, of the true conception of the nature of the Church founded on earth by the Saviour of mankind. It must be a body—' cne body and one spirit,' as the Apostle puts it. And it is an organised body— not an accidental assemblage of independent units. It is not, for instance, like a heap of Waitaki shingle, which has nothing more than accidental cohesion, and can be shovelled into a dozen different heaps, and back again into one, without any substantial alteration in the condition of its constituent parts. No ; it is an organised body. It is one in body and one in the spirit that pervades it and gives it life. And there is (as a great writer has put it) ' a perpetual communion or interdependence between its parts, iby virtue of which the whole becomes, morally, one being, >instoad of a number of independent atoms.' In other words : it is a living organised body composed of men, continual from agie» to ago till the. end of time, God's appointed witness to the wcrld, the teacher and the shepherd of His people*.