know that very well. It is a very significant fact that not one of the original great exponents of the commercial spirit had a higher education. There is now a second generation with education but the evil arose not among the educated, but among those of limited vision. They keep on heaping up money because after forty or fifty years they cannot do anything else. College students are rarely attracted by the commercial ideal. "To be a money-making man first and a useful man second will not satisfy me," writes a recent graduate. Instances like this could be multiplied. College students and thoroughly trained men educated in the "old-fashioned" college, are not much under the way of this evil. And so we find examples of educated men who count not their lives dear unto themselves, in preaching from the pulpit and in living in the pew true and lofty ideals. This is a day of high demands upon the minister. Who would enlist in the army, if there were not battles to fight? The solution of this and of the other problems of our generation will be found in following closely in the footsteps of that Master of life, who knows what is in man. May God give us all the spirit of the Master that will get at these problems from his point of view and will solve them with his wisdom.

THE PROBLEM OF CHURCH FEDERATION.
REV. WALLACE MACMULLEN, D. D.

Every lover of unity has had his heart gladdened by recent great events. The practical union of the denominational leaders in foreign fields to reduce friction and increase power in their attacks on the strongholds of heathenism, has been almost, if not quite, matched in significance and value by happenings near at hand. In Canada there has been formulated a plan for the union of the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists, by which these bodies will give way to The United Church of Canada. This plan is to be sub

mitted to the governing bodies of the churches involved, and then to the people for final ratification. The prospects for its adoption are bright. For twenty-five years Canada has taken the initiative in union movements and now fitly crowns her past achievements by actually proposing an organic union between churches which in their history have had contacts with each other other than friendly. They have proposed a creed simple enough and roomy enough to accommodate warring theologies and an administrative plan which will, it is thought, satisfy the champions of widely diverse systems of government. This is the Lord's doing and is marvelous in our eyes. On this side the line we have not dreamed as yet of letting even our faith, much less our practice, soar into regions so exalted, yet the same spirit is working among us and our salvation from the evils of division may be nearer than we dream, and the union of Christendom may be the beautiful triumph of the Twentieth Century. If we can not as yet discuss church union because it seems a waste of breath, we can discuss in a hopeful, believing way church federation."

The recent gathering at Carnegie Hall, New York, in which the representatives of thirty denominations resolved, by a vote of 500 to 1, to form a Federal Council will be regarded in coming Christian history, not only as a memorable gathering of unusual interest but as the divinely planned starting point of a new development of the Kingdom, the liberating touch by which unused and unsuspected forces were sent circling through the world. The fact that brotherhood, kindly and generous, is one of the dominating notes of the music of our day, is seen not only in the unanimous action of this conference but in the comments upon its action by those from whom hostile criticism might have been expected. The Christian Register of Boston declared that it marked a great advance and that the exclusion of the Unitarians was of small moment compared with the union of Calvinists and Armenians. The Universalist Leader said

even though our own church is at present omitted from the list, we hail the movement as one of the most promising of the age." In the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore, a paper which is supposed to represent the views of Cardinal Gibbons, a writer said, "We believe that if ever church unity is to be visibly attained, even in a moderate degree, it will be brought about under some such form as this great conference in New York has assumed. Let us be done with the Gospel of hate, the impugning of motives, the cruel annoyance and relentless persecution of former days." Amen!

What do we mean by Church Federation? We do not mean uniformity of government. Run through political history and note the forms of government which have obtained among men-despotism, oligarchy, monarchy limited and absolute, democracy-they have all held sway and do now and men have never yet agreed as to the form which is final and ideal.

Said Tennyson:

"Ah God for a man with heart, head, hand,
Like some of the simple great ones gone

For ever and ever by,

One still strong man in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat—one
Who can rule and dare not lie."

By which is meant not that the form of a government is a matter of indifference but a matter subordinate and that any form is legitimate which secures the ends for which government exists. Nations must decide their own form of rule or endure that which they are not yet fitted to change. It depends on the origin of races, their temperament, their inheritance, their historical crises. We may hope for a parliament of man, a federation of the world" but not for its political oneness. Well, when men get Christian, they are not de-naturalized. Their personal independence or their intellectual habits persist and they are as sure to have their views about

the best forms of church rule as of state rule. Varieties of ecclesiastical government are the necessary accompaniments of varieties of political government. And, if there had never been any theological and spiritual reasons for breaking away from the control of Rome, there would undoubtedly have been division and the development of various forms of church government because of the changes of political form so characteristic of the modern world. Nor do we mean uniform belief. History is very clear upon this-that attempts to secure uniformity of belief by pressure of authority have been the roots out of which divisions have grown. Men may agree in their opinions but cannot be forced into such agreement unless they neglect to think, surrender their rights, or are insincere for the sake of peace. They tried it at the Council of Nice and drove Arius into exile and forced his followers, through fear, to soil their own souls by denying their convictions. They made a good creed which could not be spared from the treasures of the church, but it was crippled in its service to the cause of truth by the anathemas which weighed it down. If they could only have had the conciliatory temper of the Apostolic Council which dreaded division and was determined upon federation, the violence would have gone out of their debates, bitterness out of their hearts, and curses out of their creed. To saddle human inquiry with a false application of a political principle, to cause men to agree to the notion that truth can be determined by a majority vote was to do age-long damage to the truth itself. It was a heavy price to pay for a theological triumph and a surface peace. At Chalcedon they continued the process and made other rents and divisions in the body of Christ. And so in council after council, in the weary history of the church wrangling, useful truth has been made into galling fetters by ecclesiastical authority.

That which is tampered with in any forced uniformity of polity or belief is fundamental to the soul and sacred-liberty. It must not be interfered with. It cannot be ultimately

denied. It must not be surrendered save at the bidding of love. Rome refused to give it play and the unity of Western Christendom was shattered. The Reformers forgetting their own protests and claims set narrow bounds for it and Protestantism broke into innumerable sects. Every separate fragment of Protestantism is an insistence upon the idea that liberty of thought and worship is an inalienable right. That which is thus affirmed in the very existence of the Protestant world will not be denied in the interests of union. Nor is any compromise of liberty necessary. In Webster's famous speech he denied that liberty and union were alternatives and repudiated the policy which would sacrifice one in order to retain the other. "Liberty and union" is the true national ideal. That was sound policy for the nation. It is equally sound for the Church. The union which will ultimately come will be in happy alliance with liberty and will defend it.

This being agreed upon-that liberty is sacred-something important follows and it must be prominent in any federation which we devise. If we are not to destroy the differences which represent the convictions of free souls we are to give them frank and cordial recognition. The denominations from whom we differ have their rights and their values. Το acknowledge mutual rights is comparatively easy; that measure of justice is part of our breeding. But to cordially, heartily proclaim the value to the world and to God of those from whom we differ ordinarily makes quite a draft upon our Christian courtesy and perhaps strains it a little. And yet such an admission is only a bit of common honesty forced from us, if we are reluctant about it, by the facts of history. All the denominations have served God in the fields of truth and life; have said things and done things in the interests of the Kingdom for which we, all of us together, ought to be thankful. If we are not then our vision is dim or our faith in the Master's rule very uncertain, or our mantle of Christian charity so thin as to be useless to shivering souls. Frank recognition of the value of all the Christian bodies, of