in Paul's language, gave Himself "a ransom for all "? I believe in the universality of God's love. To that love and all its blessings I call the most reprobate and the most despairing of men. This is the sweet gospel to whose proclamation my whole life is called; when, therefore, I meet a man who glories in discriminating and specialising grace, I brand him as an enemy to the kingdom which he has never entered.

As a Nonconformist I should like to say a word upon Union in view of the fact that we have an Established Church. I am afraid Union is impossible. The Dissenter cannot but look upon the Historic Episcopate as a historic fiction, and the Episcopalian cannot fully receive the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. Disestablishment would have no relieving effect upon the unhappy position. Personally I wish to recognise in the most grateful terms the attention and the courtesy which I have experienced at the hands of the clergy from the highest to the humblest; and in a more than personal sense I wish to recognise my indebtedness to the religious and literary service rendered by the English Church. Dissenters would act a contemptible part if they did not honour the illustrious Churchmen of this and other ages. Yet there is the ghastly fact that union is impossible. Nor is the impossibility lessened by a certain kind of calcu lated courtesy, such as little social attentions which are marred by a back-lying reserve difficult in some cases to distinguish from suspicion, and occasional meetings on neutral platforms which only darken and broaden the line of separation. At one time I had hoped to amend our relations by inviting clergymen to occupy my pulpit occasionally, but circumstances were too strong for me. Clergymen were ready to preach, but Bishops would not allow them to render this measure of service. Yet we all believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost! We all believe in the Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture! We all believe in the unspeakable tenderness and infinite power of the Cross! Need I force myself to put my excited feeling into words?

Having defined my own position in this vital matter I turn to another view of the question of Christian union. I submit that real union can never be realised by artificial means. There have always been many tinkers, willing, on remunerative terms, to do a good deal of ecclesiastical soldering. I have no faith in their motive or in their practice. The only union worth striving for, or praying for, is the union which flows from an ever-deepening and ever-heightening love of Christ. If we do not keep the first commandment, we can never keep the second. When our souls are full

of the love of Christ we cannot help loving the brethren. They belong to us and we belong to them. Not by parchments, resolutions, sub committees, and compromises can Christian union ever be realised. It must come from the land of the green spring and the ruddy summer. There will be no earth-marks upon it. It will be as the dawn, silent, unaided, irresistible,—a very miracle of blessedness. There are some things of a negative kind which we can all be doing. We can discourage censoriousness. We can frown down all spiteful criticism. We can put to silence the gainsaying of foolish men. Then, positively, we can preach with the eloquence of character, and lay hold of many by the beauty and unselfishness of our conduct who can never follow the subtleties and contradictions of our metaphysics.

Disputable questions of all sorts, and not of one sort only, must be left open if genuine union is to be realised and enjoyed-such questions, of course, being disputable as amongst believers, and not as viewed by hostile criticism. For example, how many theories are there of Inspiration? of the Atonement? of Baptism? of Churchism? of Priesthood? Men may hold that the Bible is inspired without asking how? in what degree? to what extent? Inspiration is greater than any of its definitions can be. It would be enough for me if any church believed in Inspiration-whatever the academic theory of it might be. It would also be enough as a basis of union, wherever union is mutually desired, that a man should believe in the Christian Church, whether Papal, Anglican, or Congregational. Here again the rule applies, Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. I hold that individual conviction is infinitely preferable either to hereditary assent, or the spiritual paralysis which is glossed over with the name of indifference. My rule of interpretation enables me to unite with many who are exiled or stigmatised as unorthodox. I find the point of union in a common sincerity. The one man whose influence is fatal to union is the dogmatist,—a term often misunderstood and misapplied. In my judgment a man is a dogmatist when he says that he alone is right, and that what he says is complete, absolute, and final. This position may never be set forth in plain terms, yet the spirit of it may be detected in many a monstrous claim. The man who sets himself up as the censor of his brethren, always knowing who is right and who is wrong, and never even hinting at his personal fallibility, is not a Christian, though he speak louder than the winds and make the most daring professions of piety. The withdrawal of such a man would be a gain to any Christian society.

Jaya Parker

The City Temple.

V.

HUGH PRICE HUGHES, M.A. UNDOUBTEDLY one of the most characteristic eccle siastical features of our day is a widespread yearning for reunion. Even the unhappy disposition to accentuate some of those ecclesiastical tenets which are the only real hindrances to reunion is an indication of this movement of thought; those who spend so much time in claiming for themselves ecclesiastic al monopolies and in trying to unchurch their fellow-Christians do so under the delusion that such proceedings on their part promote the unity of Christendom. When we remember how far disunion has been carried in the past, this feature of our own day is very astonishing. I think all really catholic Christians may congratulate themselves that the centrifugal forces have now spent their strength, and that the centripetal forces are becoming more and more powerful. At one time, not very long ago, we heard a good deal about the blessedness of disunion and the immense advantages which arose from the divisions of Christendom. The utter absurdity of that sentiment, once very popular in certain Dissenting quarters, was first brought home to me, when I was a mere boy, by reading, in the pages, I think, of the Westminster Review, an article upon the subject of the Reunion of Christendom. The writer of that article, regarding the proposal from the standpoint of those who have rejected Christianity, offered the strongest opposition to all proposals of reunion, because, he said, if these Christians reunite, "What's to become of us?" He declared that if the Christians of Europe once stood shoulder to shoulder their power would be irresistible, and there would be no room for the enemies of the Christian faith. I realised in a moment that the disunion of Christendom was the opportunity of atheism, and that the very terror which the prospect of reunion excited in certain infidel quarters was one of the strongest reasons why Christians should do their utmost to promote that consummation. I do not deny or doubt that in the unhappy past the disruption of Christendom was inevitable-was the lesser of two evils. No really Christlike man would hesitate for a moment to sacrifice external unity to truth and the supreme commands of Christ. It would be immeasurably better that the Christian Church should be shattered into ten thousand fragments than that the rights of conscience, and especially the direct right of every human being to come to Christ as his personal Saviour, should be

abandoned. Nevertheless, it seems to me that disunion is only the lesser of two evils. The fact that under certain circumstances it was inevitable does not contradict the indisputable fact that it is accompanied by terrible practical evils. The waste of time and money and energy occasioned by the fraticidal strife of Christians is incalculable. The loss

of hope, esprit de corps, enthusiasm, and expectation of victory on the part of the Christians is even more deplorable. Nothing tends to demoralise any army so much as strife in its own ranks. The buoyancy, the confidence of primitive Christianity has been almost lost in consequence of heartrending and hopeshattering strife. Above all, the odium theologicum has brought the Christian Churches into public contempt, and has furnished the enemies of Christianity with their most persuasive and crushing arguments. As the result of our disunion the great majority of the European races are at this moment outside the Christian Church, and the overwhelming majority of the human race are heathen. These evils are so colossal that we ought to be prepared, for the sake of union, to sacrifice everything except loyalty to Christ. I cannot even understand the state of the Christian man's mind who would hesitate for a single moment to give up everything that was not absolutely essential, rather than postpone for a day the union which would bring us irresistible strength in the presence of the enemies of Christ. I have not finally abandoned the hope that the whole of Christendom may some day be reunited. There is no insuperable difficulty even now in the way of a general reunion of all the Churches which may be called evangelical. The Nonconformists of this country, the great Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and the Continent, the vast Protestant communities of our kinsmen beyond the seas, and the evangelical and liberal section of the Anglican communion are in substantial agreement at this

moment.

I have long felt that the late Frederick Myers, the author of the remarkable "Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology," which all good men should read, was right in his conviction that the only real dividing line among the Christian Churches is the doctrine of the Apostolical succession. That is the watershed of Christendom; and the ultimate direction of thought and action is determined by our relation to that doctrine, whether we are on this side of it or on that. When anyone can deliberately state, as the late Canon Liddon stated in St. Paul's Cathedral, that the episcopate is essential, not only to the bene

esse, but to the very esse of the Christian Church, he has cut himself away from his fellow-Christians by an almost impassable gulf. All who do not hold that amazing doctrine could, without any serious difficulty, establish a modus vivendi with one another, provided always that the question of political Church establishments was settled. The only real hindrance to the immediate reunion of the Presbyterians of Scotland is in the establishment of one of the fragments of Presbyterianism; and in this country the liberal and evangelical section of the Church of England are immeasurably nearer to us than to the extreme party whose eloquent mouthpiece I have just quoted. Nothing but the Establishment controversy prevents that fact from being realised.

But must we utterly despair of the ultimate union even of those who at this moment make the episcopal system essential to the existence of the Christian Church, and so doing excommunicate millions of the best Christians in the world? The views expressed by the late Canon Liddon are, of course, held with equal vehemence by the Greek Church and the Roman Catholic Church. In soine respects the Roman Catholic Church is further from us even than the Greek Church, for the Greek Church herself rejects the Papacy and the late Ultramontaine and Jesuitical developments of so-called Latin Christianity. If, therefore, we can discover a ray of hope, even amid the gloom of Roman intolerance, nothing is impossible. I cannot help thinking that Roman Catholics of the type of Cardinal Manning would ultimately find a way of reconciling their views with a due recognition of those whom Christ has unmistakably recognised, and of modifying their irreconcilable attitude to an extent that seems incredible now. Some time ago Cardinal Manning was good enough to give me his work on "The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," and I was surprised to read in the very first sentences of that book the following statements :—

"Two Pontiffs have condemned as heresy the two following assertions: That the heathen, and the Jews, and heretics receive no influence from Jesus Christ, but that their will is without help-that is, without grace-was condemned as a heresy by Alexander VIII. Again, that there is no grace given outside the Church was also condemned as heresy by Clement XI. The work, therefore, of the Holy Ghost, even in the order of nature, so to say that is, outside of the Church of God and of the revealed knowledge of Jesus Christ among the heathen -that working is universal in the soul of every individual human being; and if they who receive the assistance of he Holy Ghost are faithful in corresponding with it, God, in His unrevealed mercies, will deal with them in ways secret from us. His mercies, unknown to us, are over all His works, and the infinite merits of the Redeemer of the

world are before the mercy-seat of our Heavenly Father, for the salvation of those that follow even the little light which in the order of nature they receive."

Surely in this remarkable paragraph we have a loophole through which Divine love and common sense may stream in? If two Roman Pontiffs have declared ex cathedra that heathen, Jews, and heretics receive the grace of Jesus Christ, and that the work of Jesus Christ is carried on successfully outside the pale of what Cardinal Manning at present calls "the Church," the growth of true enlightenment in the Roman communion may, ages or centuries hence, make a modus vivendi possible even between Protestants and Roman Catholics. No one will suppose that I have any sympathy with distinctively Romish doctrines. I belong to the only race in Europe which has neither a Roman Catholic church nor an infidel hall of science. We Welshmen allow no one to come between us and Jesus Christ. He is the supreme Head of all our Churches, and He only. We cannot recognise any man as His vicar, because we deny that He is absent from earth. He is here in the midst of us now, and therefore there is no more room among us Welsh Christians for any vicar of Christ than there is in this country, where the British sovereign herself resides, room for a viceroy. Nevertheless, although I am apparently at this moment as far removed from Cardinal Manning as the poles, I know that he is a most devout Christian, and that he accepts the supreme headship of Christ as truly I do, although in his theory there is a place for a human vicar for whom I cannot find any room. And I rejoice to believe that the humanity and catholic spirit which breathes through the passage I have quoted indicates that the logic of facts is stronger than the logic of theory, and that the best Roman Catholics are compelled in some way or other to explain the existence of millions of undoubted Christians outside their own communion.

One of the most remarkable and gratifying features of the age is the way in which Cardinal Manning, Bishop Vaughan, of Salford, and others of the Roman communion co-operate with their fellow-Christians in the promotion of all sorts of social reform. Here, indeed, reunion, in the sense of co-operation, can begin at once-has, indeed, begun already. It is already an accomplished fact that in the promotion of Temperance, Social Purity, Peace, and other great enterprises all Christians can once more act together; and let it not be forgotten that this has never hitherto been the case since the Reformation. I strongly agree with Dr. Paton, Lord Nelson, and others that

Christian men of all communions should co-operate together as much as possible and as frequently as possible in the promotion of those public and humanitarian objects for the sake of which, without any compromise of supposed principle, it is now demonstrated they can unite. The passage I have quoted from Cardinal Manning is one of numerous evidences that those who hold extremely intolerant creeds are very much better than their creeds, and that what they truly believe is often much more catholic and scriptural than what they "believe they believe." Let us hope that we are all very much better than we sometimes profess to be. We all more or less inherit the

REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES, M.A.

traditions and the prejudices and antipathies and shibboleths of the controversial and anarchical past; and the result is that we appear to differ even more widely than is really the case. Those of us who hope most ardently for vast and comprehensive reunions are well aware that courtship must precede marriage. As the old proverb says, "Those who marry in haste often repent at leisure." Let nothing be rushed; but let all Christian men do their utmost to co-operate with one another in every possible way. The real grounds of discord are to a much greater extent emotional than intellectual, sentimental than rational, and when we come to know one another we like one another; and it is astonishing how differences grow less and difficulties disappear under these genial circumstances. I start, therefore, with the broad principle that the ultimate reunion of Christendom is not an absolute impossibility to be dismissed at once and for ever from our thoughts. I hold with

the great Christian philosopher Leibnitz, that it is a matter which should be seriously and constantly pondered. On the other hand, I fully recognise the fact that possibly hundreds of years must elapse before anything like a general reunion of Christendom comes within the range of practical ecclesiastical politics.

Yet there are certain reunions that might take place at once-that might be consummated before the twentieth century dawns. There is no reason whatever why all Congregational Churches, whether Pædobaptists or Anabaptists, should not be embraced in the same fraternal Union. The Congregational system, with its absolute congregational autonomy, makes it possible for these brethren to combine in the only way in which combination is for them consistent, without any compromise of any kind. And in sparsely-populated localities they might undoubtedly carry out the existing principle of "Union Churches" on a much larger scale. With respect to the Presbyterians, there is no reason at all, except the existence of monopolist establishments, why we should not have only one Presbyterian Church in every country. It is now generally conceded that, after political Disestablishment, the unity of the Churches of Scotland will be re-established. With one or two insignificant local exceptions, that desirable Presbyterian consummation is already achieved in this country. And there is every prospect that the Calvinistic Methodists, who are the principal Church of Wales, will enter into the closest union with the Presbyterian Church of England. I strongly hold with the Bishop of Ripon that we cannot ignore differences of race. National autonomy must be respected, even in ecclesiastical arrangements. The existence of the Welsh Presbyterian Church side by side with an English Presbyterian Church in this country is quite consistent with the most genuine unity.

With respect to the other great community of Free Churches, the Methodist Union is by no means so difficult or remote as Mr. Gladstone imagines. He has quite recently revealed, in a republished article, that his knowledge of Methodism is not marked by that accuracy which usually distinguishes him in other spheres. As a matter of fact, there is no body of Christians in the world which, within our own time, has displayed the tendency toward union so strongly as we have. In Ireland the two branches of Methodism were happily united some years ago, and we have now only one Methodist Church in the sister island. A yet more astonishing and encouraging thing has been achieved in the great Dominion of Canada. A few years ago Methodism was more divided there even than here. Wesleyan-Methodism, New Connexion Methodism, Primitive Methodism, Bible Christian Methodism, and the Methodist

Episcopal Church of the United States of America were all separately represented. But true religion, and the sanctified common sense generated by true religion, have recently prevailed to such an extent among our brethren in Canada that all these sectarian distinctions have disappeared, and the Methodist Church of Canada is now one and indivisible from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I am confident that the day is not distant when we shall have as much true religion in this country as our brethren have already exhibited on the other side of the Atlantic. The British Methodists are visibly drawing closer to one another every day. We are about to unite for a week of special prayer. We are now united in an (Ecumenical Conference in the city of Washington. We are alive to the waste, the scandal, the positive wickedness of having two or even three Methodist Churches in localities in which, in the very nature of things, there is only room for one. The only hindrances to union which still survive are certain prejudices and misconceptions of the dead past. These are rapidly passing away, and in face of the gigantic religious work which awaits us in this country, where the majority of the people go to no place of worship, we shall not be able to keep up our fantastic divisions much longer. When Methodist union takes place in the mother country, the effect will be irresistible, in all lands. We shall have a united Methodism in Italy, in Germany, in Africa, in India, in China, in Japan, in all the colonies; and even the mighty Methodism of the United States, now that the dividing line of slavery has in the goodness of God been blotted out, will once more recover the unity which it possessed when, one hundred years ago John Wesley fell asleep. National independence will, of course, be maintained. Racial distinctions will be respected, and we shall have both American and African Churches, for example, in the United States. But at the Ecumenical Conference, which, for the future, will meet regularly, all nations and all races will be equally represented, and intense unity, without paralysing uniformity, will be achieved. When all the Congregationalists are one, and all the Presbyterians are one, and all the Methodists are one, the problem will be very much modified.

What shall we say of our Episcopalian fellow-Christians? Personally I have no objection to an Episcopalian system. On the contrary, I believe that history has demonstrated that it is the best. I hold with Bishop Lightfoot that some form of Episcopacy was probably established before the death of the Apostle John, and all through the ages the Episcopal system has proved its immense efficiency, especially for aggressive purposes. We are all realising that the capable man, rather than the disputatious committee, ought to be at the head of affairs. We believe with William Jay, of Bath, that "if the Ark had been built by a committee it would not have been finished yet." By all means let us have bishops of the right sort. Let us trust them. Let us give them a free hand, and they may accomplish everywhere what the gifted bishops

of the Methodist Episcopal Church have achieved in the United States.

There is one other practical observation which I should like to make. If reunion is ever to take place it must be brought about by the corporate decision of the great Christian communities acting as a whole. There are some exceedingly surprising persons who imagine that they can restore the unity of Christendom by stealing individual members or families from other Christian bodies, and adding them to their own! Anyone who reflects can see that this process of gaining over supposed "heretics" or "schismatics" one by one is mathematically impossible. All the Christian communities which are regarded by some as outside the Christian Church are now numbered by millions, and no one in his sober senses can suppose that the process of stealing one here and one there can ever result in bringing these millions over. Take, for example, my own communion. There are now 30,000,000 Methodists on this planet. We are far more numerous than the Anglican Church or any other Church except the Greek and Roman. Does anyone suppose for a moment that it would be possible to bring back all those millions one by one, or family by family, to the Church of which John Wesley was the minister? It is simply impossible. The largest conceivable number of such personal ecclesiastical changes does not produce the least appreciable effect upon the size of the community they leave. The attempt to proselytize individuals is simply as absurd as it is detestable, and can never succeed. We cannot blot out the world-wide effects of past history. We might as well try to drain the Lake of Geneva with a tea-cup. If anything effective is ever to be done, it must be achieved by approaching our fellow-Christians in their corporate capacity, and making proposals which are consistent with their conscientious convictions and self-respect, and which exhibit a readiness on our own part to make concessions for the sake of Jesus Christ.

The mention of the greatest of all names leads me to say, in conclusion, that I am persuaded the hindrances to reunion everywhere consists in a false definition of the "Church." So long as men, in the very teeth of history and in contradiction to the New Testament, say Ubi ecclesia ibi Christus, there is nothing before us except controversy and division. But when we are prepared to subordinate our own preferences and prejudices to facts-patent indisputable facts—and when we are sufficiently reverent to regard the unmistakable imprimatur of God as of greater importance than the dicta of men, we shall say Ubi Christus ibi ecclesia; and when that is said the reunion of Christendom is already practically achieved.

A. Price Aughes.