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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 64. The New Church Unity.
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The New Church Unity.
And now there is a new movement in church life developing rapidly; a new stage is being entered upon. The immense strides which man has recently made and is making in obeying the divine command to subdue the earth and develop it, are rapidly working out a new family spirit among all the men of all the earth. The unity of the race is revealing itself afresh. And this is finding expression in the life of the Church.
There has been growing up in the last half-century a remarkable spirit of unity. And now there is a marked and remarkable stretching of eager hands across the dividing lines towards such a unity as Christ prayed for so fervently as He was going away. It can be thoughtfully said that there is to-day a practical unity in the Church deeper and keener, warmer and more sympathetic, than when it bore only one name.
And this is said with full alertness to the differences. But the differences are always less than the likenesses; always less than the one dominant 'spirit beneath varying names and forms and customs. And in our day the dividing lines are looking towards a point of meeting. These are not straight lines, else they would never meet. They are angled lines, slanting lines, of peoples coming up from different parts of the earth, and they are drawing towards a meeting-point.
We Americans are quite in the habit of thinking of ourselves as the great world-leaders, in aggressiveness and enterprise at least. But our spirit-brothers in Japan and Korea have been ahead of us in their attempt to wipe off the slate the dividing church lines they got from us. And our blood-brothers in Britain are clear ahead here. In Scotland, a land and people as much marked for independence of thought and action as ever the old Greeks were, the coming together of churches within recent years has been most remarkable. Our Canadian neighbors have joined their Methodist bodies into one, and are now at the still greater task of uniting bodies as different in both doctrine and management as Methodist and Presbyterian and Congregational.
In our own country the United Presbyterian Church in its name tells of a coming together. And movements are in various stages of progress for union on a much wider scale. Blood-brothers of our North and South who differed intensely and sacrificially have come together materially and commercially, fraternally and socially, and have been reaching hands across the line in church life to get together again there. Never since apostolic days has there been so much evidence of the oneness of the Church.
And yet beneath all the movements towards organic union is a spirit of unity far greater than can ever find expression through mere oneness of organization. There has grown up a practical unity in service on the mission field to a large extent, and ever increasing. And at home the practical union of missionary efforts by students, by church boards, and now in this great new laymen's movement, is most inspiring. The Church is one Church in essential spirit, and is in increasing measure becoming one Church in practical service.
Serious mistakes have been made and very serious differences have arisen. These but tell the intensity of feeling regarding matters they love of strong men who are not perfect either in love, or in knowledge, or in self control.
One group of men has made a statement of what they believed. Their followers have required that all after-comers into their circle shall assent to that statement. Another group in a later generation, under wholly different conditions, with new light, and a new way of expressing its thoughts, has not liked that statement but preferred to make its own. And so there has been friction.
Sometimes earnest men dwelling in the valleys have not been able to look over the hills for the comprehensive view which sees things in true relation to each other. But these very differences, with the factional heat involved, have but spelled out the vigorous vitality of men in robust life. The crowd has looked too much at the differences. But then, crowds usually do that. As a rule the crowd doesn't think. Men differ strongly only about the things they love. The mountain peak of strong life and deep devotion and essential unity of spirit looms high over all differences. We should keep our eyes more upon its noble form.