The Sacrament

I

BY

The Reverend ROBERT COLLYER, D.D.

LOVE to muse over those words of Saint Paul touching our Christian Faith and Fellowship, "By one spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentile, whether we be bond or free," and, when I note how we differ in so many ways, to stand free from the letter, so far as I am able to do so, and cleave to the spirit because the letter is so often the line of division we all draw, while the spirit of truth and love is the Divine reality.

For we read the same Bible, turn our faces to the same blessed heavens when we pray, and hold in our hearts the one essential faith that God is our Father, and that Jesus the Christ, the anointed, came to reveal the Father to our human family. While the line of division may mean sprinkling or immersion, prayer from a printed book or directly from the heart, predestination or free grace, the essential or verbal inspiration of the scriptures, trinity or unity, with many things beside on which as my own faith stands no man's eternal welfare ever did depend or ever will. Because the essence of prayer is to pray in the spirit and in truth, with printed words. or without them, or with no words at all. And baptism is merely the symbol; so far as the water is concerned, we can use it if we will, or let it alone as the "Friends" do. And the divine inspiration is the holy spirit of truth-of God-in the soul, in the Bible and in all noble and true books; while the Bible is to me the noblest and the best, and predestination or freewill are the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the soul of man as they are in the planets. So turn where we will we find the spirit which giveth life, and turn where we will we can find the letter which killeth; while just as we come into bondage to the letter in doctrine, dogma or usage, and disdain to have fellowship with those who differ from us we make naught

of the love of God in its uttermost sanctuary, the heart of His Christ, and are not Christians then but sectarians. Also there is always this deep distinction to be drawn between faith and doctrine no matter where we may stand, that the one is the body at best, while the other is the spirit, the one is the fountain and the other the cistern, the one the garden in which is gathered all I love best, while the other is the great garden of God which belts the world; and doctrines, dogmas and usages are of the seen and temporal, but a living faith is of the unseen and eternal.

I note again when this truth of the spirit touches me to the finer purpose that there is no way open to me if I would be a proper man, let alone a Christian, but this, that I must admit the good, the sincere and the true in all the Churches into my fellowship no matter whether they will take me into theirs or freeze me out. Because I have to remember my dear mother was a Baptist, so that Church is dear to me for her sake and was not a prison but a home to her fine sunny heart in which she found all grace and blessing in her sweet old age. I was also baptized into the Episcopal Church, and so she has a lien on me I cannot and will not deny, while it was very sweet and good for me a year ago to stand close to the old Church far away in England and see them bear me to the Font through the mists of seventy-four years. I was a scholar also for about nine years in a good old-fashioned orthodox Sunday School, the only Divinity school that was ever open to me, and I confess myself a lifelong debtor to that school. In my early manhood I became a Methodist, and for ten years was a local preacher within that pale. She was also my nursing mother; I have still a tender regard for her. She nursed me forth for my ministry of fifty years all told and nursed me well; while my love still takes me back to visit the old home now and then as Mahomet in his last years visited the garden of his youth and said to his attendant, "Pluck me some fruit from that tree; I know it is very sweet and good."

So in all the Churches I have kinsfolk now and friends

whose hands clasp mine in the fellowship of the spirit, while still we differ in dogma, in doctrine, in usage and ordinance, and I can say in all sincerity, men and women good and generous of heart as you are belong to the Church of the Living God, no matter about the name or denomination. You believe in a sight of truth you do not understand as yet, and so do we. We give a greater place no doubt than you do, to what we call reason and perhaps underscore reason now and then with too heavy a line, while we think you underscore faith with too heavy a line in some directions. We think our faith is the best, while you think yours is the best, but I think we should all be of the mind of the old Divine who when a youth that had just chipped the shell said to him, "Sir, I will believe nothing I do not understand," answered, "Then, sir, your creed will be the briefest I ever heard of in my life."

As I said, I was for ten years a Methodist. I have been for more than forty years now a member and minister of the Unitarian denomination. Then I believed and tried to teach the truth held in that church, now I believe and try to teach the truth in the Church of my love and fellowship which still bears the brand of heresy. I did not try to believe in this heresy— so called-any more than I tried to grow to my stature as a man. The striving was indeed the other way. I would fain have stayed in the old warm nest and could not imagine what would become of me if I should push out and try to do for myself. But it was all of no use; the truths I have accepted would haunt me and master me, and so I found I must accept them or I could have no peace, and being in some sort a preacher I must preach what I most surely believed or I could have no honour; so we parted company, the mother and her son, with a tender regret, and I went forth not knowing whither I went to find this home and ministry among the Unitarians.

It was fifteen years after I left England and six years after entering this ministry that I returned to visit my dear old mother and the household. We have a very noble Church in

the city of Leeds where her home was then, and they invited me to preach there. My mother went with me to the Church. I was glad and proud to have her go and hear me. We went home arm in arm after the service. She was silent for a while as we walked along and then she said, “My lad, I am not sure that I understood thy sermon or that I could believe as thou does now;" but then she clasped my arm with a loving pressure and said, "thou must be sure that I believe in thee." And I answered, “Mother, that is all I care for, that you shall believe in me."

And now I wonder whether this is not still the best of all both for faith and fellowship among those who differ, that we shall believe each in the other, and that our beliefs this way or that, are far less a matter of our free will than we usually imagine; while if we are true to our own souls and therefore to God, we must believe about as we do.

We cannot always think alike or believe alike in the most sacred relation we can hold toward each other in our homes; how then shall we do this in the great Church of the Living God to which we all belong who are worthy the Christian name?

The oaks grow best alone but the vines need a standard, and as some flowers love a day which is three-quarters shadow and some love all the sunshine the heavens can pour upon them, and as all the herbs and the fruits in a garden are better than any one, sweet and bitter, sharp or mellow. As some love Rembrandt's pictures best with their strong lights and shadows and some Raphael's with their floods of glory and hosts of angels, while no great gallery can be perfected with either school left out, so I think we should make up our minds that any Church which can include these diversities of thinking and believing in a common fellowship must be more Godlike and Christlike than those that insist on the law of uniformity and exclusion and breed in and in, like the fowls in Hawthorne's story, so careful in their breed that in the end there was only one chick to their name and he could not crow, he could only croak.

Does my brother believe then that only the elect shall be saved and like Davie Deans in "The Heart of Mid-Lothian say, "he only kens of two who hold to the pure doctrine, Davie Dods and ane ither he will not name." And does he want me to fellowship with him on these terms I will say, "Yes indeed I will," and then try to enlarge the boundaries of his faith until they are as broad as my own. Does he say, "I am an atheist, now will you fellowship with me?" I will answer, "That must be at your own option; I will give you my hand and heart and try to have you believe as I do. And then if after all you die an atheist, if you have been gracious and helpful toward your brother man, if you have done justly, loved mercy and walked humbly on your lonesome way, then I tell you, my friend and brother, I for one will stand by your dust if you die first I will say, 'This man was true to himself, to his humankind, to me and mine and to all the truth he could find. Let us thank God for the good atheist." "

Such are the terms of fellowship I love to hold for one. I would not say, are you a praying man, or are you a believing man? I would say, "Do you want to be a good man?" My faith is that the directest way to heaven lies right through the world we live in, and the best preparation for the life to come is a sound and true life down here, that can be in the world and of the world in clean and wholesome ways. I will welcome a man for his manhood or the budding promise of manhood or the hope that the bud will appear bye and bye. And teach this truth also for faith and fellowship, that we can serve God as truly in the week days as on the Sundays, in the forge, in the shop or in the field as certainly as in the Church. That this world is no dismal prison house in which all the commandments begin with Thou shalt not. We may make it a sweet and gracious home in which laughter shall be as sacred as tears, and a noble ballad when we want to sing one as good in its time and place as a psalm of David.

So runs my faith, that God our Father does not stand burning with wrath, because we do not believe in Him as we