Article December 3, 1910 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Orchard, Day

[Churchman.]

The one outstanding ground for gratitude for the year 1910 is to be found in the changed attitude of great communions of Christians toward unity. Chicago's Laymen's Congress, Edinburgh's World Conference, and Cincinnati's General Convention have, with a unanimity unknown in our history, acknowledged the need of a united witness of Christ to the world through his church. Wherever the records of congress, conference, and convention are known, there to the great thanksgiving for all God's mercies will be added the conscious sense of power that comes from obedience to God and His will. Yet none of these great gatherings of Christians placed unity where Christ placed it, as the first and final cause in the Christian economy. But the road to this full recognition is being mapped out and its course marked. If any one were to deny the unity of the Christ's personality, he would do so at his peril, for all Christians, without regard to division or sect, would be offended. Why is there not the same sense of wrong, the like consciousness of treason and sin, when the unity of the body of Christ is either denied or ignored—when a divided Christendom bears its witness to a divided Christ to the world which he commissioned his church to serve and to save? To St. Paul a divided discipleship meant only witness to a divided Christ. To him who was greater than St. Paul, the unity of his disciples was the essential condition of his being made known to the world. The indivisibility of the church is his evidential claim upon the faith of the world that his Father had sent him. Yet Christians have put other things before his claim. Divided Christendom continues to pray his prayer for unity, while they have given systems and philosophies and doctrines precedence over his way.

[Rev. Dr. Orchard in Christian Commonwealth.]

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