churches is more ripe for action than within them. On both sides there
is need for something like an educational campaign on the subject of
reunion and of the duty of Christians in regard to it. Difficulties have
to be faced of a very serious kind. On the Nonconformist side there are
still many who feel very keenly the burden of the disabilities from
which they have suffered, and to some extent still suffer. They know
that in some country districts Nonconformists are subjected to petty
social persecutions, and that their boys or girls who wish to become
elementary school teachers are handicapped from the outset. Many of them
have been brought up on bitter memories, and their inherited hostility
to the State establishment of religion does not incline them to any
_rapprochement_ with its representatives. It is well that these facts
should be faced, for they shew the need there is for the Free Churches
to educate their own people.
To all this we have to add the _vis inertiae_ which operates in all the
churches alike. Many of them are entirely satisfied with things as they
are, and are only anxious that we should let well alone. There is too
among certain of the denominations a self-satisfaction amounting almost
to Pharisaism. They are very busy with their own work and devoted to
their denominational interests, and, so long as these can be maintained,
they do not see the use of agitations for reunion. They do not believe
that they have anything to gain from it and therefore they let it alone.
The same spirit shews itself too on the Anglican side and there becomes
a serious obstacle to any advance. There are those who regard the Church
of England, as by law established, as the only possible Church for
England, and they cannot imagine why any people should want to change
its present position. Dissenters they say are outsiders and schismatics,
and must be left to go their own way. They should be thankful for the
toleration which has been extended to them and not abuse it by asking
for more. For all this kind of thing there is only one remedy, and that
is a wider vision, and for this all Christians of good will should
strenuously work and pray. It should surely be obvious that we can no
longer treat any church or denomination as an end in itself. All alike
exist for the great end of the Kingdom of God and are to be judged by
their efficiency in promoting that end among men. So no system of church
order can be regarded as of divine right in itself but only so far as
it becomes a channel of the Spirit of God and mediates His gifts to
men. All the churches as we know them to-day have grown up in
controversy and represent a long process of development and adaptation.
If we are to test them it should not be by the more or less artificial
standards of any one age in their history, but rather by the spirit, and
temper, and intentions of their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. When this
is done, the differences between them fall into their proper proportions
in view of the failure which is common to them all. On these terms too
will the old antagonisms become a generous rivalry in good works and
each church be ready to seek the welfare of others in the common
interests of the Kingdom which they all serve.
So far we have dealt largely with the past and with the various
movements in the direction of unity which have been set on foot. It now
remains to say something of the motives which inspire and the principles
which underlie them. First and foremost is the fact that it is the will
of our Lord that His people should be one. This does not mean surely any
mere uniformity of organization but unity of spirit, heart, and will. We
seek this chiefly because it is a right thing. Anything short of it is
evil. The Christian faith rests ultimately on the Fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man, and these can only be made real when all
Christians accept them and make them the ground and basis of their
relations with one another. Here we need to appeal to the conscience of
the churches and challenge them to put the first things first and learn
in the love of the brethren the love and service of God and His Church.
Then we are bound to recognise in the next place that this unity is the
prime condition of successful work and witness. The tasks awaiting the
churches in the immediate future are gigantic and only as they stand
together and learn to speak and act as one have they any chance of
accomplishing them. They have to evangelize the world, and for this they
will need above all things a common faith, a common witness, and a
common sacrifice. They have to leaven society with the aims and
principles of Jesus Christ, to bring His spirit to bear on all social,
political, commercial, and industrial undertakings, and for this too
they will need the united weight of all their influence and the passion
of a great common crusade. The devil is a great master of strategy and
knows that if he can keep our forces divided there is nothing in them
that need be feared. We must therefore close up our ranks and present a
united front, not merely as a measure of self-preservation but in order
to do well the work that has been committed to us. This will involve
some real self-sacrifice on the part of us all, but it is the way the
Master went and His followers must not shrink from it. If we but keep
our eyes fixed on the great vision of the Kingdom which He opened before
us, we shall not faint but go forward steadfastly and together until the
kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of God and of His Christ.
UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS
IV. THE SCOTTISH PROBLEM
By the Very Rev. JAMES COOPER, D.D., Litt.D., D.C.L., V.D.
The very appearance of this subject on the programme of the CAMBRIDGE
SUMMER MEETING, and still more the fact that it has been entrusted to
ministers of different Christian denominations--one of them, too, from
across the Border--are signs of a remarkable change that has come
over--we may say--the _whole Christian people_ of Great Britain.
Our island was, till not so long ago, emphatically a land of different,
and diverging "churches" and "denominations," unashamed of their
separation; nay, boasting their exclusiveness, or their dissidence,
commemorating with pride their secessions and disruptions. And even when
they began to see something of the evils such tempers and such acts had
brought in their train--the wastefulness of them, in regard alike to
money, to men's toil, and gifts given by God for the use of the whole
Church but confined in their exercise to some small section;--the injury
to character, the multiform self-righteousness engendered by our
schisms, the breaches of Christian justice and charity;--the treatment
of that whole Mediaeval Period to which we owe so much, as if it had
been one dark age of heathen blindness;--and, again, the hindrances to
Christian work at home and especially abroad,--when uneasiness over
these results began to shew itself, the recognition of the evil
expressed itself at first in ways hardly indicative of any depth of
penitence, or conducive to any practical measures for the healing of the
wrong. We had in one quarter "Evangelical Alliances," which put a new
stigma on huge portions of the Church of God, yet left those who took
part in their meetings contented in their own divisions. In other
quarters--probably in both the established Churches of our island--there
was a tendency (and more) to look down on Dissenters as such, to ignore
even their reasonable grievances, to ask more from them than either Holy
Scripture or early tradition could warrant, and to disparage unions that
were possible and urgent as likely to put new difficulties in the way of
that further and perfect union of all who believe in Christ which alone
He has promised, and for which alone He tells us that He prays.
I should be the very last to deprecate either prayer or effort to
advance this perfect end. It ought to be the ultimate aim of all of us,
since it is Christ's. We must do nothing to hinder it: we must do all
that may be lawful for us to promote it. But it should be pointed out to
such as look exclusively towards the East and Rome, first, that a juster
view of those great Churches--great gain as it is--affords little excuse
for ignoring the Churches of the Reformation, and for leaving the large
numbers of devout Christians in the lesser sects without either the hope
or the means of supplying defects which are now, for the most part,
rather inherited than chosen; second, that the divisions and
"variations" among all who in East or West, in England or in Scotland,
in the 11th or the 16th century, felt themselves bound to repudiate the
Papal Supremacy, have supplied, and still supply, the Papacy with a
chief weapon against all of us alike, and in favour of those extreme
pretensions which have been a chief cause of, and remain a chief
obstacle to reunion; and third, that nothing is more likely to bring
about that kinder attitude toward the East and us which we desiderate on
the part of Rome than a large and generous measure here and in America
of "Home Reunion"--effected, of course (as it can only be effected), on
the basis of the Catholic Creeds, a worship in the beauty of holiness,
and the Apostolic Ministry.
Anyhow, this is what we are finding in Scotland. Scotland, I know, is
but a little bit of the world: its largest churches small in comparison
with those of England and the United States, not to speak of the vast
communions of Rome and of the East. But the experience even of a small
part may intimate what may be looked for in much larger sections of what
after all is essentially the same body. For the Church, the Body of
Christ, in all lands and in all ages is one in spite of its divisions.
Christ is not divided. It is "subjective unity" not "objective" which in
the Church on earth is at present, through our sins, "suspended." Well,
in Scotland; where, let me remind you, the confession of Christ alike as
"King of the Nations" and "King in Zion," and of the visible Church as
His Kingdom on earth, was never laid aside, either in the National
Church or in the churches which separated from it (we laid aside much
that we should have done well to keep, but we stuck manfully to this);
we have had within recent times quite a number of incorporating unions;
including two of considerable note--the union in 1847 which brought
together in the "United Presbyterian Church" the two main sections of
our 18th century "Seceders," and the union of 1900 of the United
Presbyterians with the great mass of the "Free Church" of 1843--the
union that has given us the "United Free Church." I doubt if to either
of these unions the hope of a future Catholic Reunion contributed, at
the time, much or anything. I know there were some in the Church of
Scotland who fancied, and alleged, that the union of 1900 was
"engineered" with no friendly purpose towards us. But what has been the
outcome? Both of these unions:--partial in themselves--have tended, in
the result, very materially to de-Calvinize (if I may coin the word) the
general Presbyterianism of Scotland, and break down narrow prejudices,
to widen the outlook and enlarge the sympathies of those who took part
in them. The second, and greater of these unions, that of 1900
(suspected then, as I have said), proved, within eight short years, to
be the very thing to pave the way for the opening, between the Church of
Scotland and the United Free Church, of those official negotiations for
an incorporating union which promise now to give us ere long a Church of
Scotland, not complete, indeed--not embracing even all the Presbyterians
of Scotland, and greatly needing the Scottish Episcopalians--but still a
Church which will include an immense preponderance of the Scottish
people; which will be able to cover the whole country with not
inadequate organizations; which will be freer also than it is at present
to enter into further unions; which will remain--what it has ever
been--both national and orthodox; and will continue, I believe, to go on
rapidly resuming many of those touching, reverent, and churchly usages
which in the heats of the 16th and 17th centuries it unwisely threw away
or, less excusably, gave up in the coldness of the 18th. We have still
some beautiful old usages, as well as enviable liberties and powers. And
even in the 18th century we kept the Faith against Arian and Socinian
heresy: even then, our sacramental teaching could be high: even then,
the doctrine and the practice alike of the Established Church and the
Seceders were clear and strong on the derivation of the Ministry from
Christ, and the Apostolical succession of our ministers, and yours,
through presbyters.
For myself, I suggested in 1907, when it was proposed in our General
Assembly to open these negotiations, that we should attempt a larger
duty, and approach all the reformed Churches in Scotland. I was
over-ruled. It was held wiser "in the meantime" (they gave me this much)
to "confine our invitation" to the United Free Church.
The Scottish Episcopal Church appeared to be of this mind also; and
those in her and among us who have long looked wistfully towards our
union with her and with the Church of England are already finding that
our present effort (limited as it is) is proving not an obstacle, as
some of us feared, but a powerful impetus towards the larger effort. The
union seems likely to clear away hindrances to an extent we never
dreamed of. It is opening up the wider prospect among an increasing
number not in the Church of Scotland only, but emphatically also in the
United Free Church. On all hands it is "recognised" in Scotland that the
official "limitation of the Union horizon is only temporary":--I quote
from the _Annual Report_ for this year of the Scottish Church Society:
No one is content to accept the contemplated union, should it be
accomplished, as exhaustive. We all wait for a fuller manifestation
of the Grace of God. At this season of Pentecost we dream our
dreams and see our visions of that great and notable day when all
who name the One Name shall be one.
The witness of the Scottish Church Society may seem to some one-sided:
here is a witness from the other side, of a date more recent than last
May; from a pamphlet just issued by the venerable Dr William Mair, the
first and most persevering of the advocates of our present enterprise.
His words impress me as very touching in their transparent honesty:
It is thirteen years (he writes) since I first spoke out in the
form of a pamphlet. No man stood with me. Hard things were said of
me. I believed it to be the will of the HEAD of the Church, the
LORD JESUS CHRIST, that there should be union of His Church in
Scotland, and primarily that its two great Churches should be one.
I have never for a single moment doubted that His will would be
fulfilled, or that it was the duty of these Churches to set
themselves, under His guidance, with resolute purpose to work out
its fulfilment.
Observe his "primarily": he quite recognises (I have his authority for
saying so) the further obligation. And no wonder: he is clear as to the
one great and supreme motive that should inspire all efforts for Church
Reunion--faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the obedience of faith
which the true confession of His Deity involves.
The will of the Lord in regard to the visible unity of His whole Church
is plain: "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I
must lead; and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock,
one Shepherd." No doubt there is a difference between a fold ([Greek:
anlê]) and a flock ([Greek: poimnê]), between the racial unity of the
Jewish Dispensation and the Catholic and international character
impressed from the beginning on the Christian Church. But a flock is as
visible as a fold is. We can see the one moving along the road under the
shepherd's guidance just as distinctly as we see the other gleaming
white on the hillside, or raising its turf-capped walls above the level
of the moor. We can see, of course, if the walls of a fold are broken
down; but we can see also whether a flock is united, whether it is
moving forward as one mass, or is broken up and scattered. Such
separations might be well enough if the different little companies were
all going quietly on in one way; though even then their breaking up
would argue on the one hand a portentous failure in that recognition of
the shepherd's voice and the obedience to him which is due to his loving
care, and on the other hand a strange lack of that gregariousness which
is an instinct in the healthy sheep. But what if the sheep are seen
running hither and thither in different directions: if they are found
labouring to explain the inadvisability--nay, the impossibility--of
their ever coming into line; if we see them instead crossing each
other's path, starting from each other, jostling and butting one
another, continually getting into situations provocative of fights and
injuries?
Is this the kind of picture which the Lord Jesus has drawn of His Flock,
His Church as He wishes, and intends, that it should be: is this what He
promises that it shall be?
Christ made His Church one at the beginning: the rulers He set over it
"were all with one accord in one place"; "the multitude of them that
believed were of one heart and of one soul." And when the Gentiles had
been brought in, what care did the Apostles take lest the new departure
should cause a separation along a line made obsolete by the Cross of
Christ; and with what adoring admiration does St Paul gaze at the
delightful spectacle of Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ
Jesus--"where," he cries, "there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision
and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is
all, and in all."
In matters of rank and race and colour all our denominations retain this
Apostolic Catholicity. How inconsistent to maintain it there, and
repudiate it when we come to such differences as mostly separate us!
These are differences far more of temper than of creed, or even of
worship or government. We say, sometimes, that we are "one in spirit":
not so; it is just in spirit that we have been divided. In creed and
organisation both, and in temper as well, the Church of Apostolic times
was visibly one. "See how these Christians love one another" was the
comment of the heathen onlooker. This state of things continued for a
long time. Gibbon enumerates the Church's "unity and discipline," which
go together, as among the "secondary causes" of that wonderful spread of
the Gospel in the first three centuries.
The revived, broadened, and more candid study, alike of the New
Testament and of Church History throughout its entire course, is one of
the ways in which the Good Shepherd has been leading us to see alike the
disobedience of our divisions, and the small foundation there is for
many of the points over which we have been fighting.
Happily too, we do not now need to argue in favour of visible and
organic unity. "The once popular apologies for separation which asserted
the sufficiency of 'spiritual' union, and the stimulating virtues of
rivalry and competition, have become obsolete."
More happily still, we have learned practically to appreciate the
difference between our Saviour's gentle I must lead ([Greek: dei me
agagein]) and our forefathers' various attempts to produce "uniformity"
by driving. The reproach of that sinful blunder is one that none of our
greater Churches--Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Puritan--can cast in
another's teeth. Each of us committed it in our day of triumph. "What
fruit had we then in those things whereof we are now ashamed?" The
memory--one-sided, and carefully cultivated--of what each suffered in
its turn of adversity has hitherto been a potent agency for keeping us
apart. To-day those memories are fading. I was much struck by a remark I
heard last spring from the Bishop of Southwark, that one reason why we
are more ready nowadays to contemplate reunion is just that we belong to
a generation to whom those miserable doings are far-off things outside
alike our experience and our expectation.
In other ways also we discern leadings of Our Saviour to the same end.
Through Whitefield and the Wesleys, and the Evangelical Revival, He
re-awakened the peoples of England and America to a keen sense of the
need for personal religion. Where these powerful agencies had the
defects of their qualities, in their failure to appreciate aright His
gracious ordinances of Church and Ministry and Sacrament, He rectified
the balance by giving us in due course the Oxford Movement, whose force
is not "spent," but diffused through all our "denominations." Let us be
just to the Oxford Movement: without it, humanly speaking, we should not
have been here to-day. If it had its own narrownesses, it revived the
very studies which, while they have revealed the inadequacy of certain
of its postulates, have also brought clear into the view of all of us
the Divine goal which now gleams glorious in front of us--the goal of
the great Apostle--"the building up of the Body of Christ: till we all
attain unto the unity of the Faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ."
A Scotsman may be excused for referring to the debt which the leaders of
the Oxford Movement--Dr Pusey in particular was always ready to admit
it--owed to Sir Walter Scott, particularly in re-awakening a more
sympathetic interest in the Mediaeval Church. If Sir Walter's countrymen
were slower to follow him in this matter, they are doing so now in
unexpected quarters. We are full to-day of the American alliance: may I
remind you that Sir Walter Scott was the first British man of letters to
hail the early promise of American literature by his cordial welcome to
its representative, Washington Irving? Scott was a devoted subject of
the British Monarchy; but he saw, and he insisted on, the duty of Great
Britain to cultivate a warm friendship with the United States.
In the same direction we have been led in days more recent by the large
development, in all our denominations, of two main branches of Christian
work. I refer to Missionary enterprise abroad and Social service at
home. Our ecclesiastical divisions are a serious handicap to both. In a
matter more vital still, that of the Religious--the Christian--Education
in our Schools and Colleges, our divisions have sometimes proved
well-nigh fatal. The one remedy is that we make up our differences and
come together.
And now this War, so dreadful in itself, is helping powerfully, and in
many ways, to the same end. It is bringing us together at home, and
making us acquainted with, and appreciative of, each other in a thousand
forms of united service. It has spread before our eyes the magnificent
and inspiring spectacles of Colonial loyalty, of one military command
over the Allied Forces, of the cordial and enthusiastic support of a
fully-reconciled America. Shall "the children of this world be wiser
than the children of light"? Shall the Church neglect the lesson read to
her by the statesmen and the warriors? Then, again, the cause for which
we are in arms is--most happily--not denominational. The present War is
not in the least like those hateful, if necessary, struggles which
historians have entitled "The Wars of Religion": but it is, on the part
of the Entente, essentially and fundamentally Christian--more profoundly
so than the Crusades themselves. That is why it is bringing us so
markedly together. And, if this is its effect at home and in America,
much more is it producing the same result among our chaplains and our
Christian workers at the Front. They are finding, on the one hand, the
limitations, or faults, of every one of our stereotyped methods of work
and forms of worship; they are seeing on the other hand among each other
excellencies where they only saw defects. They are brought together in
admiring comradeship, which resents the shackles restrictive of its
play. Let me read to you a passage from a letter I received a fortnight
since from an eminent Anglican chaplain now serving with our troops in
France: