Have you read the story of the Woolwich Crusade, published by the S.P.C.K. (1s. 3d.)? The Crusade movement and method is a new thing. Its idea is not that of a mission—to increase or improve the membership of a particular denomination, but to bring God and the meaning of Christ into the life and problems of to-day. It is doing the same sort of work which chaplains in France do, among the munitioners, artisans, and labour world at home. Perhaps our Nonconformist brethren could join us here. The difficulties would, I think, merely be those of organisation.

Thanks to the College system, and to the Student Christian movement, Churchmen and Nonconformists are as friendly in this University as they are in France; and joint devotion is usual. We have a great responsibility here amid the young and the enthusiastic, and good feeling is both easier to achieve, and more widespread in result, at a University than anywhere else. Well, we are awake to our chances, and will do our best.

(e) This leaves but one more subject to touch on: the old, hard, question of Church order, and the orders of ministry. But all looks in the best sense hopeful here, very hopeful, since the striking report signed by the thirteen members of the sub-committee appointed by the Archbishops' Committee, and by representatives of the English Free Churches' Commissions. Let me quote it.

Looking as frankly and as widely as possible at the whole situation, we desire with a due sense of responsibility to submit for the serious consideration of all the parts of a divided Christendom what seem to us the necessary conditions of any possibility of reunion: That continuity with the historic Episcopate should be effectively preserved. That, in order that the rights and responsibilities of the whole Christian community in the government of the Church may be adequately recognised, the Episcopate should reassume a constitutional form both as regards the method of the election of the Bishop as by clergy and people, and the method of government after election.... The acceptance of the fact of Episcopacy and not any theory as to its character should be all that is asked for.... It would no doubt be necessary before any arrangement for corporate reunion could be made to discuss the exact functions which it may be agreed to recognise as belonging to the Episcopate, but we think this can be left to the future.

The acceptance of Episcopacy on these terms should not involve any Christian community in the necessity of disowning its past, but should enable all to maintain the continuity of their witness and influence as heirs and trustees of types of Christian thought, life, and order, not only of value to themselves, but of value to the Church as a whole....

It would be difficult to imagine a wiser, braver, or happier statement than this in the whole history of the Church. A landmark indeed! The Chaplains to the Forces in France almost shouted for joy. At one stroke, the first and greatest incompatibility of conviction has been cleared out of the way. Perhaps that is too strong—or prophetic—a way of putting it. Let us say rather, that at least the question of Episcopacy and Church order has been raised to a new plane, where all can discuss it, and think it out, not only peaceably, but with good hope of new wealth of conception and polity pouring into the old, rigid, bitter, rival views of church government. In France I corresponded with a Wesleyan chaplain on the subject of orders and ordination. He wrote a careful letter affirming the historic Nonconformist position about ministry. But, he ended, it would all be changed, if re-ordination could be presented and accepted as a great outward "Sacrament of Love" which reunited us. That is more than the Church of England has ever asked, for she regards ordination as a Sacrament of Order merely, not of Spiritual Love. But let us gladly put the higher value upon it. And the day will surely come, unless goodhearted Christians settle down to accept the intolerable burden of permanent separation in communion and worship, when this Sacrament of Love be celebrated, and the Church of England ordains the Free Church ministry, and the Free Churches commission us, to work each and all in the flocks that have been made one Fold.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] In the paragraphs which follow, I owe much to the Bishop of Zanzibar's The Fulness of Christ, perhaps the deepest and ablest of all the numerous Anglican books on Reunion.

[15] It is fair to state that after this lecture was delivered, I received a note from one who had been at Cheltenham, saying that my references to it gave an inaccurate impression; and that the findings were only "an expression of opinion." To those, however, who read the published account of the meeting, whether in the Record or Guardian, much more seemed to be intended.

[16] Quoted from the Second Interim Report of the Archbishops' Committee and the representatives of the Free Church Commissions.



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS



III. THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH FREE CHURCHES

By the Rev. W. B. SELBIE, M.A., D.D.

While I think that what I say may be fairly taken to represent the general mind of these churches it must be understood that I do not in any way commit them but speak only for myself. I propose first to recall the circumstances which gave rise to these churches and the conditions which still operate in maintaining them as separate Christian bodies, and then to give some account of the various movements towards reunion in which they have taken part. The Baptists and Congregationalists you will remember arose at a time when membership in the Anglican Church was a formal and perfunctory thing. It was open to every parishioner and meant very little in the way of Christian life or witness. The first Nonconformists stood for the principle that membership in Christian churches should be confined to genuinely Christian people, and in order to secure this they formed separated churches, on the New Testament model, of those who were able to give effective witness of their Christian calling. That such churches should be self-governed followed almost as a matter of course. Their meeting in the name of Christ secured His presence among them and the guidance of His spirit in their doings. But it is always important to remember that their essential characteristic is not either democracy in church government or dissent from the Establishment, but the positive witness to purity of membership and to the sole headship of Jesus Christ just described. The Wesleyan Church, the parent of the whole great Methodist movement, arose at the end of the 18th century from somewhat similar reasons. There was never anything schismatic in the spirit of John Wesley, but when he found that the rigour and stiffness of Anglicanism made a free spiritual witness almost impossible, he was driven, like the Nonconformists of the Elizabethan times, to set up separate churches. While it is quite true that the great principle for which English Nonconformity has stood is now almost universally accepted, and that what may be called the negative witness of the Free Churches is much less necessary than it used to be, there is still room for their positive contribution to the religious life of the country, for their witness to freedom, spirituality, and the rights of the people in the Church. For a long time, no doubt, they did rejoice in the dissidence of their dissent, and they suffered, and still suffer, to some degree, from a Pharisaic feeling of superiority to those whom they regard as bound by tradition and State rule. The great majority among them, however, have long since come to feel that they have more in common with one another and with many in the Anglican Church than they have been hitherto prepared to admit, and that existence in isolation from the rest of Christendom is neither good for them nor helpful to the cause of Christ and His Kingdom. This feeling first took definite shape about the year 1890 in connexion with what are now known as the Grindelwald Conferences. For three successive years informal parties of clergy and ministers were arranged by Sir Henry Lunn, at Grindelwald and Lucerne, with the object of getting representatives of the different churches together in order to exchange views on the subject of union, and to create an atmosphere of mutual knowledge, sympathy, and friendliness. Although no practical steps directly followed them, these conferences undoubtedly did good by removing misunderstandings and paving a way for further intercourse. To many of the Free Churchmen who attended them they seem to have suggested for the first time the evils of our unhappy divisions, and they certainly created a desire for better relations. It became obvious that one of the necessary first steps in this direction would be the setting up of a closer cooperation among the Free Churches themselves, and of breaking down the denominational isolation in which they too often lived. Further conferences were held in England at Manchester, Bradford, London and other centres, the ultimate issue of which was the foundation of the National Federation of the Evangelical Free Churches under the guidance of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Dr Berry of Wolverhampton, Dr Mackennal of Bowdon, and Dr Munro Gibson of London, along with laymen like Sir Percy Bunting and Mr George Cadbury. The aim of the Federation was to bring all the evangelical Nonconformist churches into closer association in order that they might in various localities take concerted action on questions affecting their common faith and interests and the social, moral, and religious welfare of the community. Since that time the work of the Federation has gradually covered the whole country through local councils working on a Free Church parish system, and engaging in various forms of social and evangelistic effort. The representative central council has become a powerful instrument for furthering the cause of the Free Churches and for bringing their influence to bear on social and political matters. It must be freely admitted that this council has sometimes gone further in political action than some of the churches have been altogether prepared for. From the first, so representative a Nonconformist as the late Dr Dale of Birmingham stood aloof from it, on the ground that it tended to divert the energy of the churches from the proper channels and to involve them too deeply in political controversy. In this action he was supported by many of the more conservative elements in the churches themselves, particularly as the circumstances of the time compelled the council to engage in a good deal of political agitation. In spite of this, however, there is no doubt that the Free Church Council movement as a whole has had the effect its first promoters intended and desired, and has brought all the Free Churches into much closer relations with one another, and has established them in a position of mutual understanding and sympathy. Its chief weakness has been that it has depended for support on individual churches rather than on the denominations they represented. It is the consciousness of this which has led the way to a later movement in the direction of still closer federation. The lead has been taken by the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, who, as President of the Free Church Council in 1916, propounded an elaborate scheme for the federation of the Free Church denominations. In his first presidential address under the title "The Free Churches at the Cross-roads" he put forward an unanswerable case for the union of the whole of the Free Churches of England. He pointed to the fact that for many years past these churches have suffered a serious decline in the number of their members and of their Sunday school scholars and teachers; and he found one of the chief causes of this in their excessive denominationalism, which led to over-lapping and rivalry. He pleaded that the old sectarian distinctions had now ceased to represent vital issues, and to appeal to the best elements both in the churches and in the nation outside; and he urged that the maintenance of these distinctions now tended to destroy the collective witness of the Free Churches and involved an immense waste of men, money and energy. For the sake of efficiency, as well as in order to maintain a proper Christian comity, he argued that it was absolutely necessary to put an end to this condition of things. As long as the Free Churches were thus divided, they could not expect either to do their own work well or to exercise their proper influence in the life of the nation. There is no doubt that this estimate of the situation represented a growing feeling among those who were best acquainted with the facts. But it is probable that Mr Shakespeare under-estimated the strength of the conservative spirit in many of the Free Churches. And there is no doubt that a considerable educational process will have to be gone through before his proposals take practical shape. This process, however, has already begun and has made considerable way. Mr Shakespeare's challenge led almost immediately to the formation of a large conference of representatives appointed by the Free Church Council along with the Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Primitive Methodist, Independent Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, Wesleyan Reform, United Methodist, Moravian, Countess of Huntingdon, and Disciples of Christ Churches. This Conference first met at Mansfield College, Oxford, in September, 1916, and later at the Leys School, Cambridge, in 1917, and again in London in the early part of this year. It appointed Committees on Faith, Constitution, Evangelization and the Ministry, all of which have held many meetings in addition to those of the whole Conference. The Committee on Faith was able to frame a declaratory statement on doctrine which was afterwards unanimously adopted as follows:

I

There is One Living and True God, Who is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Him alone we worship and adore.

II

We believe that God so loved the world as to give His Son to be the Revealer of the Father and the Redeemer of mankind; that the Son of God, for us men and for our salvation, became man in Jesus Christ, Who, having lived on earth the perfect human life, died for our sins, rose again from the dead, and now is exalted Lord over all; and that the Holy Spirit, Who witnesses to us of Christ, makes the salvation which is in Him to be effective in our hearts and lives.

III

We acknowledge that all men are sinful, and unable to deliver themselves from either the guilt or power of their sin; but we have received and rejoice in the Gospel of the grace of the Holy God, wherein all who truly turn from sin are freely forgiven through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and are called and enabled, through the Spirit dwelling and working within them, to live in fellowship with God and for His service; and in this new life, which is to be nurtured by the right use of the means of grace, we are to grow, daily dying unto sin and living unto Him Who in His mercy has redeemed us.

IV

We believe that the Catholic or Universal Church is the whole company of the redeemed in heaven and on earth, and we recognise as belonging to this holy fellowship all who are united to God through faith in Christ.

The Church on earth—which is One through the Apostolic Gospel and through the living union of all its true members with its one Head, even Christ, and which is Holy through the indwelling Holy Spirit Who sanctifies the Body and its members—is ordained to be the visible Body of Christ, to worship God through Him, to promote the fellowship of His people and the ends of His Kingdom, and to go into all the world and proclaim His Gospel for the salvation of men and the brotherhood of all mankind. Of this visible Church, and every branch thereof, the only Head is the Lord Jesus Christ; and in its faith, order, discipline and duty, it must be free to obey Him alone as it interprets His holy will.

V

We receive, as given by the Lord to His Church on earth, the Holy Scriptures, the Sacraments of the Gospel, and the Christian Ministry.

The Scriptures, delivered through men moved by the Holy Ghost, record and interpret the revelation of redemption, and contain the sure Word of God concerning our salvation and all things necessary thereto. Of this we are convinced by the witness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men to and with the Word; and this Spirit, thus speaking from the Scriptures to believers and to the Church, is the supreme Authority by which all opinions in religion are finally to be judged.

The Sacraments—Baptism and the Lord's Supper—are instituted by Christ, Who is Himself certainly and really present in His own ordinances (though not bodily in the elements thereof), and are signs and seals of His Gospel not to be separated therefrom. They confirm the promises and gifts of salvation, and, when rightly used by believers with faith and prayer, are, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, true means of grace.

The Ministry is an office within the Church—not a sacerdotal order—instituted for the preaching of the Word, the ministration of the Sacraments and the care of souls. It is a vocation from God, upon which therefore no one is qualified to enter save through the call of the Holy Spirit in the heart; and this inward call is to be authenticated by the call of the Church, which is followed by ordination to the work of the Ministry in the name of the Church. While thus maintaining the Ministry as an office, we do not limit the ministries of the New Testament to those who are thus ordained, but affirm the priesthood of all believers and the obligation resting upon them to fulfil their vocation according to the gift bestowed upon them by the Holy Spirit.

VI

We affirm the sovereign authority of our Lord Jesus Christ over every department of human life, and we hold that individuals and peoples are responsible to Him in their several spheres and are bound to render Him obedience and to seek always the furtherance of His Kingdom upon earth, not, however, in any way constraining belief, imposing religious disabilities, or denying the rights of conscience.

VII

In the assurance, given us in the Gospel, of the love of God our Father to each of us and to all men, and in the faith that Jesus Christ, Who died, overcame death and has passed into the heavens, the first-fruits of them that sleep, we are made confident of the hope of Immortality, and trust to God our souls and the souls of the departed. We believe that the whole world must stand before the final Judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, with glad and solemn hearts, we look for the consummation and bliss of the life everlasting, wherein the people of God, freed for ever from sorrow and from sin, shall serve Him and see His face in the perfected communion of all saints in the Church triumphant.

The Committee on Constitution recommended a definite union of the Free Church denominations on the basis of a federation which should express their essential unity, promote evangelization, maintain their liberties and take action where authorised in all matters affecting the interests, duties, rights, and privileges of the federating churches, and to enter into communion and united action where possible with other branches of the church of Christ throughout the world. It is proposed that the federation shall work through a council consisting of about 200 representatives of the denominations in order to carry out their will. The Committee on Evangelization and the Ministry also suggested certain practical measures necessary for cooperation in these important branches of service. The scheme has been carefully thought out and elaborated, but at the same time is not too cumbrous for action, and if it can be carried out there is no doubt that it would secure the ends aimed at. In many ways the doctrinal declaration is the most important part of it, and shews a sufficient general agreement on essentials to ensure harmonious working. The fate of it lies of course with the different denominations concerned. By this time most of them have had an opportunity of considering it and, generally speaking, it has met with a favourable reception. The Baptists, Congregationalists, and United Methodists have declared their willingness to proceed to closer union on this basis. But the Presbyterians and Wesleyan Methodists have referred it back for further consideration. Rightly and naturally both of these denominations are more concerned for the moment with measures for union within their own borders. The Presbyterians are looking to a reunion of the Established and Free Churches in Scotland, while a great scheme for the reunion of all the Methodist bodies is before the Wesleyan Conference. If this can be carried out it should not prejudice but rather be in favour of any scheme for wider Free Church Union.

Nothing that has been done so far among the Free Churches is likely in any way to hinder the fulfilment of the desire which is now widely felt on all sides for better relations with the Anglican Church. It can easily be understood from the difficulties that have already emerged in the way of closer union among the Free Churches how much more difficult is the prospect of union with Anglicanism. There is no doubt that denominational feeling is still very strong among the rank and file of the churches. In spite of the changes which have taken place in emphasis and conditions in modern church thought, each denomination realises that it stands for something positive and is anxious to give its positive witness in the best possible way. It has therefore been an essential of reunion that any scheme proposed shall not interfere with the autonomy of any individual denomination and shall allow full scope for its genius. It is equally necessary that this should be preserved in any scheme contemplated for reunion with Anglicanism. The Free Churches are not disposed to bate anything of their freedom or to sink their identity in any national church. If, however, any scheme can be devised which will preserve their individuality and give them scope for their special witness and at the same time avoid the dissensions and divisions which have so marred their relations with Anglicanism in the past it is likely to meet with a very warm welcome. The war has brought home to all thinking men in the churches the imperative need that there is for closer union and for a more united testimony. And they are conscious that if they are to face the increasing difficulties of the future all the churches must be able to stand together, to cooperate in Christian service, and to speak with one voice.

It is therefore regarded by them as a welcome sign of the times that there should be a world-wide desire for Christian reunion, and that this should have begun to take practical shape just before the outbreak of the war. The movement was initiated by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America supported by practically all the churches in that country. It first took shape in proposals for a world-wide conference on Faith and Order with a view of promoting the visible unity of the body of Christ. But for the war this conference would have been held already, but under existing circumstances the work has had to be confined to preparations for it on both sides of the Atlantic. In this country the work has been mainly done by a joint Conference, consisting of representatives of the Committee appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and of commissions appointed by the various Free Churches, in order to promote the Faith and Order movement. This Conference has held repeated meetings in the historic Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster and elsewhere, and has published two interim reports "Towards Christian Unity" which are of the utmost importance. These reports represent the work of a sub-committee but have received the general sanction of the whole Conference. The first report contains the following statement of agreement on matters of faith, which is "offered not as a creed for subscription, or as committing in any way the churches thus represented, but as indicating a large measure of substantial agreement and also as affording material for further investigation and consideration":

A STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT ON MATTERS OF FAITH

We, who belong to different Christian Communions and are engaged in the discussion of questions of Faith and Order, desire to affirm our agreement upon certain foundation truths as the basis of a spiritual and rational creed and life for all mankind. We express them as follows:

(1) As Christians we believe that, while there is some knowledge of God to be found among all races of men and some measure of divine grace and help is present to all, a unique, progressive and redemptive revelation of Himself was given by God to the Hebrew people through the agency of inspired prophets, "in many parts and in many manners," and that this revelation reaches its culmination and completeness in One Who is more than a prophet, Who is the Incarnate Son of God, our Saviour and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

(2) This distinctive revelation, accepted as the word of God, is the basis of the life of the Christian Church and is intended to be the formative influence upon the mind and character of the individual believer.

(3) This word of God is contained in the Old and New Testaments and constitutes the permanent spiritual value of the Bible.

(4) The root and centre of this revelation, as intellectually interpreted, consists in a positive and highly distinctive doctrine of God—His nature, character and will. From this doctrine of God follows a certain sequence of doctrines concerning creation, human nature and destiny, sin, individual and racial, redemption through the incarnation of the Son of God and His atoning death and resurrection, the mission and operation of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, the Church, the last things, and Christian life and duty, individual and social: all these cohere with and follow from this doctrine of God.

(5) Since Christianity offers an historical revelation of God, the coherence and sequence of Christian doctrine involve a necessary synthesis of idea and fact such as is presented to us in the New Testament and in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds: and these Creeds both in their statements of historical fact and in their statements of doctrine affirm essential elements of the Christian faith as contained in Scripture, which the Church could never abandon without abandoning its basis in the word of God.

(6) We hold that there is no contradiction between the acceptance of the miracles recited in the Creeds and the acceptance of the principle of order in nature as assumed in scientific enquiry, and we hold equally that the acceptance of miracles is not forbidden by the historical evidence candidly and impartially investigated by critical methods.

This was followed by a statement of agreement on matters relating to order as follows:

With thankfulness to the Head of the Church for the spirit of unity He has shed abroad in our hearts we go on to express our common conviction on the following matters:

(1) That it is the purpose of our Lord that believers in Him should be, as in the beginning they were, one visible society—His body with many members—which in every age and place should maintain the communion of saints in the unity of the Spirit and should be capable of a common witness and a common activity.

(2) That our Lord ordained, in addition to the preaching of His Gospel, the Sacraments of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper, as not only declaratory symbols, but also effective channels of His grace and gifts for the salvation and sanctification of men, and that these Sacraments being essentially social ordinances were intended to affirm the obligation of corporate fellowship as well as individual confession of Him.

(3) That our Lord, in addition to the bestowal of the Holy Spirit in a variety of gifts and graces upon the whole Church, also conferred upon it by the self-same Spirit a Ministry of manifold gifts and functions, to maintain the unity and continuity of its witness and work.

In subsequent discussions a very considerable advance was made on the positions here laid down. It was felt that if ever reunion was to become a reality the question of order must be frankly faced, and the following statements were put forth for the consideration of the churches concerned, not as a final solution, but as the necessary basis for discussion in framing a practical scheme:

1. That continuity with the historic Episcopate should be effectively preserved.

2. That in order that the rights and responsibilities of the whole Christian community in the government of the Church may be adequately recognised, the Episcopate should re-assume a constitutional form, both as regards the method of the election of the bishop as by clergy and people, and the method of government after election. It is perhaps necessary that we should call to mind that such was the primitive ideal and practice of Episcopacy and it so remains in many Episcopal communions to-day.

3. That acceptance of the fact of Episcopacy and not any theory as to its character should be all that is asked for. We think that this may be the more easily taken for granted as the acceptance of any such theory is not now required of ministers of the Church of England. It would no doubt be necessary before any arrangement for corporate reunion could be made to discuss the exact functions which it may be agreed to recognise as belonging to the Episcopate, but we think this can be left to the future.

The first point to note in regard to the work of this Conference is the remarkable unanimity achieved in regard to Christian doctrine. While there is no intention of binding any of the parties to the ipsissima verba of any doctrinal declaration, but rather every desire to allow for varieties of expression, it is now perfectly clear that there is among all the churches concerned a substantial agreement on the main and essential matters of the Christian faith. This supplies the most real and hopeful basis for the vital union of churches thus minded, and makes their continued separation and antagonism intolerable. The more closely this aspect of the situation is explored the more clearly does it lead to the conclusion that those who are so largely one in aim, intention, and desire should find some genuine and practical expression of their unity. The question of church order is more difficult; but here again much has happened of late to justify a reconsideration of the position on both sides. On the one hand recent investigations into early church history have shewn that no one form of church government can claim exclusive scriptural or Apostolic authority. Under the guidance of the Spirit of God the Church has in the past adapted herself and her organization to the needs of the times in order the better to do the work of the Kingdom. Men are coming now to see that the test of a true Church is not conformity to type but effectiveness in fulfilling the will of her Lord, and that therefore organization need not be of a single uniform type. So we find denominations like the Baptists and Congregationalists setting up superintendents (overseers, Bishops) over their churches because the needs of the time demand such supervision. And on the other hand we find Anglicans inclining to exchange prelacy for a more modest and elective form of episcopacy. In this respect the two extremes are drawing together to an extent which would have been incredible twenty years ago, and, given good will, it should be possible to find even here a real modus vivendi.

The same may be said with regard to other movements which have been recently set on foot in the direction of a better common understanding between Anglicans and Free Churchmen. It is recognised that one of the greatest obstacles is still the so-called religious education controversy. Both sides are becoming a little ashamed of their attitude to this question in the past. They realise that the true interests of education have been gravely imperilled by making it a bone of contention among the churches, and they are beginning to look at the whole matter afresh from the point of view of the good of the child rather than from that of their denominational interests. Some important conferences have been held at Lambeth in the course of which the Bishop of Oxford has put forth a scheme for relegating the conduct of religious teaching in the elementary schools to interdenominational committees elected ad hoc. This scheme is still under discussion and at the moment is not regarded very favourably by extremists on either side, but it is all to the good that the matter should have been raised in so friendly and conciliatory a spirit and, whenever the time is ripe, it may be hoped that the way to agreement will be more open than it has ever been yet.

Further the rise and rapid growth of the Life and Liberty movement within the Established Church is something like a portent and one that Nonconformists cannot but regard with the deepest interest and sympathy. They may perhaps be forgiven if they see in it an attempt to win from within the Church just those privileges and liberties for the sake of which their ancestors came out many years ago. With a great price they bought this freedom and they rejoice in this new movement as a real vindication of the cause for which they have so long contended and as representing a body of opinion within the establishment the existence of which, whatever may be its immediate result, is sure to make a common understanding in the future more attainable. They may have serious doubts whether the aims of the movement are ever to be obtained without the Disestablishment of the Church, but for all that they wish it well and rejoice in the spirit to which it points.

One more sign of the times may be mentioned. During the last 18 months yet another Conference has been set on foot, this time between Nonconformists and Evangelical Anglicans, and has come very near to a common understanding on such vital matters as intercommunion and interchange of pulpits. It is recognised that there can be no real Christian unity without such interchange, and the fact that a growing number of Anglican clergy are prepared to discuss the question and that there is no real difficulty on the Nonconformist side is again a ground of hope. It should be understood however that on the Nonconformist side there is no desire for universal and indiscriminate facilities in the directions indicated. They do not want a kind of general post among the pulpits of the land, nor do they ask that their people should desert their own ordinances for those of the Established Church. Their people indeed have no such desire. They love the simplicity and homeliness of their own communion services and would not exchange them if they could. But they do feel that to be debarred from communicating when there is no church of their own order available is a real hardship, and they know that nothing would make for comity among the churches so surely as an occasional interchange of pulpits. They recognise that it would all have to be carried out in due order and under conditions, and as long as the conditions cast no reflexion on their orders, or on the Christian standing of their members, they would loyally accept them. Under exceptional circumstances and given due authorization on both sides, it might be possible to do openly what is often now done in a more or less clandestine way. There is a growing body of opinion on both sides which would be favourable to such a course and it is certain that more will be heard of it after the war.

This leads up to another consideration which our ecclesiastical authorities would do well to bear in mind. For a long time past younger men and women in all the churches have been accustomed to meet together in the various Fellowships and the Student movement. They have learnt to work and pray together, to know one another's mind and to realise their fundamental oneness of spirit and aim. It must be remembered that these are the men and women in whose hands the future of the churches, humanly speaking, lies, and they will not tolerate an indefinite prospect of sectarian division and strife. While loyal to their own denominations they have seen a wider and more glorious vision, and they are already prepared for very definite steps in the direction of closer relations. The new and better spirit which they represent is spreading rapidly among the rank and file in the churches, and has been strongly reinforced by experiences at the front. There, under the rude stress of war, denominational exclusiveness has frankly broken down and attempts to maintain it have excited universal resentment and disgust. There is no doubt that after the war there will be a strong public opinion in favour of better relations among the churches, and no church or section of a church that clings to the old exclusiveness will be able to retain any hold upon the people. In this case at least it may be assumed that for once vox populi is vox dei.

There is indeed every reason to believe that opinion outside the churches is more ripe for action than within them. On both sides there is need for something like an educational campaign on the subject of reunion and of the duty of Christians in regard to it. Difficulties have to be faced of a very serious kind. On the Nonconformist side there are still many who feel very keenly the burden of the disabilities from which they have suffered, and to some extent still suffer. They know that in some country districts Nonconformists are subjected to petty social persecutions, and that their boys or girls who wish to become elementary school teachers are handicapped from the outset. Many of them have been brought up on bitter memories, and their inherited hostility to the State establishment of religion does not incline them to any rapprochement with its representatives. It is well that these facts should be faced, for they shew the need there is for the Free Churches to educate their own people.

To all this we have to add the vis inertiae which operates in all the churches alike. Many of them are entirely satisfied with things as they are, and are only anxious that we should let well alone. There is too among certain of the denominations a self-satisfaction amounting almost to Pharisaism. They are very busy with their own work and devoted to their denominational interests, and, so long as these can be maintained, they do not see the use of agitations for reunion. They do not believe that they have anything to gain from it and therefore they let it alone.

The same spirit shews itself too on the Anglican side and there becomes a serious obstacle to any advance. There are those who regard the Church of England, as by law established, as the only possible Church for England, and they cannot imagine why any people should want to change its present position. Dissenters they say are outsiders and schismatics, and must be left to go their own way. They should be thankful for the toleration which has been extended to them and not abuse it by asking for more. For all this kind of thing there is only one remedy, and that is a wider vision, and for this all Christians of good will should strenuously work and pray. It should surely be obvious that we can no longer treat any church or denomination as an end in itself. All alike exist for the great end of the Kingdom of God and are to be judged by their efficiency in promoting that end among men. So no system of church order can be regarded as of divine right in itself but only so far as it becomes a channel of the Spirit of God and mediates His gifts to men. All the churches as we know them to-day have grown up in controversy and represent a long process of development and adaptation. If we are to test them it should not be by the more or less artificial standards of any one age in their history, but rather by the spirit, and temper, and intentions of their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. When this is done, the differences between them fall into their proper proportions in view of the failure which is common to them all. On these terms too will the old antagonisms become a generous rivalry in good works and each church be ready to seek the welfare of others in the common interests of the Kingdom which they all serve.

So far we have dealt largely with the past and with the various movements in the direction of unity which have been set on foot. It now remains to say something of the motives which inspire and the principles which underlie them. First and foremost is the fact that it is the will of our Lord that His people should be one. This does not mean surely any mere uniformity of organization but unity of spirit, heart, and will. We seek this chiefly because it is a right thing. Anything short of it is evil. The Christian faith rests ultimately on the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and these can only be made real when all Christians accept them and make them the ground and basis of their relations with one another. Here we need to appeal to the conscience of the churches and challenge them to put the first things first and learn in the love of the brethren the love and service of God and His Church. Then we are bound to recognise in the next place that this unity is the prime condition of successful work and witness. The tasks awaiting the churches in the immediate future are gigantic and only as they stand together and learn to speak and act as one have they any chance of accomplishing them. They have to evangelize the world, and for this they will need above all things a common faith, a common witness, and a common sacrifice. They have to leaven society with the aims and principles of Jesus Christ, to bring His spirit to bear on all social, political, commercial, and industrial undertakings, and for this too they will need the united weight of all their influence and the passion of a great common crusade. The devil is a great master of strategy and knows that if he can keep our forces divided there is nothing in them that need be feared. We must therefore close up our ranks and present a united front, not merely as a measure of self-preservation but in order to do well the work that has been committed to us. This will involve some real self-sacrifice on the part of us all, but it is the way the Master went and His followers must not shrink from it. If we but keep our eyes fixed on the great vision of the Kingdom which He opened before us, we shall not faint but go forward steadfastly and together until the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of God and of His Christ.



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS



IV. THE SCOTTISH PROBLEM

By the Very Rev. JAMES COOPER, D.D., Litt.D., D.C.L., V.D.

The very appearance of this subject on the programme of the CAMBRIDGE SUMMER MEETING, and still more the fact that it has been entrusted to ministers of different Christian denominations—one of them, too, from across the Border—are signs of a remarkable change that has come over—we may say—the whole Christian people of Great Britain.

Our island was, till not so long ago, emphatically a land of different, and diverging "churches" and "denominations," unashamed of their separation; nay, boasting their exclusiveness, or their dissidence, commemorating with pride their secessions and disruptions. And even when they began to see something of the evils such tempers and such acts had brought in their train—the wastefulness of them, in regard alike to money, to men's toil, and gifts given by God for the use of the whole Church but confined in their exercise to some small section;—the injury to character, the multiform self-righteousness engendered by our schisms, the breaches of Christian justice and charity;—the treatment of that whole Mediaeval Period to which we owe so much, as if it had been one dark age of heathen blindness;—and, again, the hindrances to Christian work at home and especially abroad,—when uneasiness over these results began to shew itself, the recognition of the evil expressed itself at first in ways hardly indicative of any depth of penitence, or conducive to any practical measures for the healing of the wrong. We had in one quarter "Evangelical Alliances," which put a new stigma on huge portions of the Church of God, yet left those who took part in their meetings contented in their own divisions. In other quarters—probably in both the established Churches of our island—there was a tendency (and more) to look down on Dissenters as such, to ignore even their reasonable grievances, to ask more from them than either Holy Scripture or early tradition could warrant, and to disparage unions that were possible and urgent as likely to put new difficulties in the way of that further and perfect union of all who believe in Christ which alone He has promised, and for which alone He tells us that He prays.

I should be the very last to deprecate either prayer or effort to advance this perfect end. It ought to be the ultimate aim of all of us, since it is Christ's. We must do nothing to hinder it: we must do all that may be lawful for us to promote it. But it should be pointed out to such as look exclusively towards the East and Rome, first, that a juster view of those great Churches—great gain as it is—affords little excuse for ignoring the Churches of the Reformation, and for leaving the large numbers of devout Christians in the lesser sects without either the hope or the means of supplying defects which are now, for the most part, rather inherited than chosen; second, that the divisions and "variations" among all who in East or West, in England or in Scotland, in the 11th or the 16th century, felt themselves bound to repudiate the Papal Supremacy, have supplied, and still supply, the Papacy with a chief weapon against all of us alike, and in favour of those extreme pretensions which have been a chief cause of, and remain a chief obstacle to reunion; and third, that nothing is more likely to bring about that kinder attitude toward the East and us which we desiderate on the part of Rome than a large and generous measure here and in America of "Home Reunion"—effected, of course (as it can only be effected), on the basis of the Catholic Creeds, a worship in the beauty of holiness, and the Apostolic Ministry.

Anyhow, this is what we are finding in Scotland. Scotland, I know, is but a little bit of the world: its largest churches small in comparison with those of England and the United States, not to speak of the vast communions of Rome and of the East. But the experience even of a small part may intimate what may be looked for in much larger sections of what after all is essentially the same body. For the Church, the Body of Christ, in all lands and in all ages is one in spite of its divisions. Christ is not divided. It is "subjective unity" not "objective" which in the Church on earth is at present, through our sins, "suspended." Well, in Scotland; where, let me remind you, the confession of Christ alike as "King of the Nations" and "King in Zion," and of the visible Church as His Kingdom on earth, was never laid aside, either in the National Church or in the churches which separated from it (we laid aside much that we should have done well to keep, but we stuck manfully to this); we have had within recent times quite a number of incorporating unions; including two of considerable note—the union in 1847 which brought together in the "United Presbyterian Church" the two main sections of our 18th century "Seceders," and the union of 1900 of the United Presbyterians with the great mass of the "Free Church" of 1843—the union that has given us the "United Free Church." I doubt if to either of these unions the hope of a future Catholic Reunion contributed, at the time, much or anything. I know there were some in the Church of Scotland who fancied, and alleged, that the union of 1900 was "engineered" with no friendly purpose towards us. But what has been the outcome? Both of these unions:—partial in themselves—have tended, in the result, very materially to de-Calvinize (if I may coin the word) the general Presbyterianism of Scotland, and break down narrow prejudices, to widen the outlook and enlarge the sympathies of those who took part in them. The second, and greater of these unions, that of 1900 (suspected then, as I have said), proved, within eight short years, to be the very thing to pave the way for the opening, between the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church, of those official negotiations for an incorporating union which promise now to give us ere long a Church of Scotland, not complete, indeed—not embracing even all the Presbyterians of Scotland, and greatly needing the Scottish Episcopalians—but still a Church which will include an immense preponderance of the Scottish people; which will be able to cover the whole country with not inadequate organizations; which will be freer also than it is at present to enter into further unions; which will remain—what it has ever been—both national and orthodox; and will continue, I believe, to go on rapidly resuming many of those touching, reverent, and churchly usages which in the heats of the 16th and 17th centuries it unwisely threw away or, less excusably, gave up in the coldness of the 18th. We have still some beautiful old usages, as well as enviable liberties and powers. And even in the 18th century we kept the Faith against Arian and Socinian heresy: even then, our sacramental teaching could be high: even then, the doctrine and the practice alike of the Established Church and the Seceders were clear and strong on the derivation of the Ministry from Christ, and the Apostolical succession of our ministers, and yours, through presbyters.

For myself, I suggested in 1907, when it was proposed in our General Assembly to open these negotiations, that we should attempt a larger duty, and approach all the reformed Churches in Scotland. I was over-ruled. It was held wiser "in the meantime" (they gave me this much) to "confine our invitation" to the United Free Church.

The Scottish Episcopal Church appeared to be of this mind also; and those in her and among us who have long looked wistfully towards our union with her and with the Church of England are already finding that our present effort (limited as it is) is proving not an obstacle, as some of us feared, but a powerful impetus towards the larger effort. The union seems likely to clear away hindrances to an extent we never dreamed of. It is opening up the wider prospect among an increasing number not in the Church of Scotland only, but emphatically also in the United Free Church. On all hands it is "recognised" in Scotland that the official "limitation of the Union horizon is only temporary":—I quote from the Annual Report for this year of the Scottish Church Society:

No one is content to accept the contemplated union, should it be accomplished, as exhaustive. We all wait for a fuller manifestation of the Grace of God. At this season of Pentecost we dream our dreams and see our visions of that great and notable day when all who name the One Name shall be one.

The witness of the Scottish Church Society may seem to some one-sided: here is a witness from the other side, of a date more recent than last May; from a pamphlet just issued by the venerable Dr William Mair, the first and most persevering of the advocates of our present enterprise. His words impress me as very touching in their transparent honesty:

It is thirteen years (he writes) since I first spoke out in the form of a pamphlet. No man stood with me. Hard things were said of me. I believed it to be the will of the HEAD of the Church, the LORD JESUS CHRIST, that there should be union of His Church in Scotland, and primarily that its two great Churches should be one. I have never for a single moment doubted that His will would be fulfilled, or that it was the duty of these Churches to set themselves, under His guidance, with resolute purpose to work out its fulfilment.

Observe his "primarily": he quite recognises (I have his authority for saying so) the further obligation. And no wonder: he is clear as to the one great and supreme motive that should inspire all efforts for Church Reunion—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the obedience of faith which the true confession of His Deity involves.

The will of the Lord in regard to the visible unity of His whole Church is plain: "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must lead; and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd." No doubt there is a difference between a fold ([Greek: anle]) and a flock ([Greek: poimne]), between the racial unity of the Jewish Dispensation and the Catholic and international character impressed from the beginning on the Christian Church. But a flock is as visible as a fold is. We can see the one moving along the road under the shepherd's guidance just as distinctly as we see the other gleaming white on the hillside, or raising its turf-capped walls above the level of the moor. We can see, of course, if the walls of a fold are broken down; but we can see also whether a flock is united, whether it is moving forward as one mass, or is broken up and scattered. Such separations might be well enough if the different little companies were all going quietly on in one way; though even then their breaking up would argue on the one hand a portentous failure in that recognition of the shepherd's voice and the obedience to him which is due to his loving care, and on the other hand a strange lack of that gregariousness which is an instinct in the healthy sheep. But what if the sheep are seen running hither and thither in different directions: if they are found labouring to explain the inadvisability—nay, the impossibility—of their ever coming into line; if we see them instead crossing each other's path, starting from each other, jostling and butting one another, continually getting into situations provocative of fights and injuries?

Is this the kind of picture which the Lord Jesus has drawn of His Flock, His Church as He wishes, and intends, that it should be: is this what He promises that it shall be?

Christ made His Church one at the beginning: the rulers He set over it "were all with one accord in one place"; "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul." And when the Gentiles had been brought in, what care did the Apostles take lest the new departure should cause a separation along a line made obsolete by the Cross of Christ; and with what adoring admiration does St Paul gaze at the delightful spectacle of Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ Jesus—"where," he cries, "there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all."

In matters of rank and race and colour all our denominations retain this Apostolic Catholicity. How inconsistent to maintain it there, and repudiate it when we come to such differences as mostly separate us! These are differences far more of temper than of creed, or even of worship or government. We say, sometimes, that we are "one in spirit": not so; it is just in spirit that we have been divided. In creed and organisation both, and in temper as well, the Church of Apostolic times was visibly one. "See how these Christians love one another" was the comment of the heathen onlooker. This state of things continued for a long time. Gibbon enumerates the Church's "unity and discipline," which go together, as among the "secondary causes" of that wonderful spread of the Gospel in the first three centuries.

The revived, broadened, and more candid study, alike of the New Testament and of Church History throughout its entire course, is one of the ways in which the Good Shepherd has been leading us to see alike the disobedience of our divisions, and the small foundation there is for many of the points over which we have been fighting.

Happily too, we do not now need to argue in favour of visible and organic unity. "The once popular apologies for separation which asserted the sufficiency of 'spiritual' union, and the stimulating virtues of rivalry and competition, have become obsolete."

More happily still, we have learned practically to appreciate the difference between our Saviour's gentle I must lead ([Greek: dei me agagein]) and our forefathers' various attempts to produce "uniformity" by driving. The reproach of that sinful blunder is one that none of our greater Churches—Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Puritan—can cast in another's teeth. Each of us committed it in our day of triumph. "What fruit had we then in those things whereof we are now ashamed?" The memory—one-sided, and carefully cultivated—of what each suffered in its turn of adversity has hitherto been a potent agency for keeping us apart. To-day those memories are fading. I was much struck by a remark I heard last spring from the Bishop of Southwark, that one reason why we are more ready nowadays to contemplate reunion is just that we belong to a generation to whom those miserable doings are far-off things outside alike our experience and our expectation.

In other ways also we discern leadings of Our Saviour to the same end.

Through Whitefield and the Wesleys, and the Evangelical Revival, He re-awakened the peoples of England and America to a keen sense of the need for personal religion. Where these powerful agencies had the defects of their qualities, in their failure to appreciate aright His gracious ordinances of Church and Ministry and Sacrament, He rectified the balance by giving us in due course the Oxford Movement, whose force is not "spent," but diffused through all our "denominations." Let us be just to the Oxford Movement: without it, humanly speaking, we should not have been here to-day. If it had its own narrownesses, it revived the very studies which, while they have revealed the inadequacy of certain of its postulates, have also brought clear into the view of all of us the Divine goal which now gleams glorious in front of us—the goal of the great Apostle—"the building up of the Body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the Faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

A Scotsman may be excused for referring to the debt which the leaders of the Oxford Movement—Dr Pusey in particular was always ready to admit it—owed to Sir Walter Scott, particularly in re-awakening a more sympathetic interest in the Mediaeval Church. If Sir Walter's countrymen were slower to follow him in this matter, they are doing so now in unexpected quarters. We are full to-day of the American alliance: may I remind you that Sir Walter Scott was the first British man of letters to hail the early promise of American literature by his cordial welcome to its representative, Washington Irving? Scott was a devoted subject of the British Monarchy; but he saw, and he insisted on, the duty of Great Britain to cultivate a warm friendship with the United States.

In the same direction we have been led in days more recent by the large development, in all our denominations, of two main branches of Christian work. I refer to Missionary enterprise abroad and Social service at home. Our ecclesiastical divisions are a serious handicap to both. In a matter more vital still, that of the Religious—the Christian—Education in our Schools and Colleges, our divisions have sometimes proved well-nigh fatal. The one remedy is that we make up our differences and come together.

And now this War, so dreadful in itself, is helping powerfully, and in many ways, to the same end. It is bringing us together at home, and making us acquainted with, and appreciative of, each other in a thousand forms of united service. It has spread before our eyes the magnificent and inspiring spectacles of Colonial loyalty, of one military command over the Allied Forces, of the cordial and enthusiastic support of a fully-reconciled America. Shall "the children of this world be wiser than the children of light"? Shall the Church neglect the lesson read to her by the statesmen and the warriors? Then, again, the cause for which we are in arms is—most happily—not denominational. The present War is not in the least like those hateful, if necessary, struggles which historians have entitled "The Wars of Religion": but it is, on the part of the Entente, essentially and fundamentally Christian—more profoundly so than the Crusades themselves. That is why it is bringing us so markedly together. And, if this is its effect at home and in America, much more is it producing the same result among our chaplains and our Christian workers at the Front. They are finding, on the one hand, the limitations, or faults, of every one of our stereotyped methods of work and forms of worship; they are seeing on the other hand among each other excellencies where they only saw defects. They are brought together in admiring comradeship, which resents the shackles restrictive of its play. Let me read to you a passage from a letter I received a fortnight since from an eminent Anglican chaplain now serving with our troops in France:

I see (he says) in this great war all the excrescences—the non-essentials which up till now have masqueraded and misled so many religious and non-religious men—drop off in the light of great realities; and I have seen in the eyes of all true lovers of our LORD, chaplains and laity, a wistful longing to unite, and mobilize our spiritual forces now dissipated and ineffective through disunion. What we look for more and more is a man, so filled with the SPIRIT of GOD—so free from ambition, covetousness, denominationalism, with a big heart and deep love, to make a plunge and start. We may be able to start out here, if we have the good-will of our leaders at home.

I think I may safely assure my correspondent that he has the good-will of all the living leaders of all our denominations? May I write and tell him so from this present meeting? [Yes....] I think I shall remind him further of those words of the Angel of the Lord to Gideon when he threshed his wheat in the wine-press with a vigour suggestive of his wish to have the Midianites beneath his flail—"Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel" from their marauding hands.

At home, then, as well as at the Front, the will is present with us; and where there is "the will" there is pretty sure to be "the way."

"The way" (I believe for my part) is substantially that laid down by the Pan-Anglican Conference of 1866, in the "Lambeth Quadrilateral." Its four points were:

I. The Holy Scriptures.

II. The Nicene Creed.

III. The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper ministered with the unfailing use of the Words of Institution.

IV. The Historic Episcopate.

It is fifty-two years since these terms were put forth. Have they ever been formally brought before the "denominations" for whom presumably they were intended? Were they even once commended to the nearest of these Churches by a deputation urging their consideration? I doubt it.

Yet the first three of these four conditions are already accepted by nearly all the English Nonconformists; and certainly by all the Presbyterian Churches, as fully as they are in the Church of England. The Presbyterian Church of England has set the Nicene Creed on the fore-front of its new Confession. Every word of the Nicene Creed (as the late Principal Denney pointed out) is in the Confession of Faith of all the Scottish Presbyterians. The Church of Scotland repeats it at its solemn "Assembly Communion" in St Giles'. Its crucial term, the Homoousion, is in the Articles now sent down to Presbyteries with the view of their transmission next May to the United Free Church.

In regard to the Sacramental services our Directory is quite express in ordering the use in Baptism and the Eucharist of the Words of Institution. I never heard of a case in Scotland where they were not used: we should condemn their omission should it anywhere occur.

Undoubtedly the Fourth Article would have, till lately, presented difficulties; but, then, those difficulties were in great measure cleared away by the admission of the Lambeth Conference of 1908 that in the case of proposals for union, say of the Church of Scotland with the Anglican Church, reaching the stage of official action, an approach might be made along the line of the "Precedents of 1610." I had a recent opportunity of stating, in an Address[17] I gave at King's College, London, what these Precedents of 1610 were; how they included the unanimous vote of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in favour of the restoration of diocesan bishops acting in conjunction with her graduated series of Church Courts; how we thereupon received from the Church of England an Episcopate which then, and ever since, she has accounted valid, though neither the Scots bishops she then consecrated, nor the clergy of Scotland as a body, were required to be re-ordained; and how the combined system thus introduced among us gave us by far the most brilliant and fruitful period in our ecclesiastical annals; and how Learning, Piety, Art and Church extension flourished among us, as they have never done since. The system would in all probability have endured to the present day but for the arbitrary interferences—often with very good intentions, and for ends in themselves desirable—of our Stuart kings. A later restoration of Episcopal Church government under Charles II lacked the ecclesiastical authority which that of 1610 possessed, and was still more hopelessly discredited by its association with the persecution of the Covenanting remnant; but even under these disadvantages it was yielding not inconsiderable benefits to the religious life of Scotland. Under it our Gaelic-speaking highlanders first received the entire Bible in their native tongue; the Episcopate was adorned by the piety of Leighton and the wisdom of Patrick Scougal; while Henry Scougal in his Life of God in the Soul of Man produced a religious classic of enduring value.

The reference by the Lambeth Conference of 1908 was meant as the opening of a door, and I understand there was some soreness among its supporters that more notice of it was not taken in Scotland. But it was never sent to Scotland: it was never communicated to the General Assembly. Our Scottish newspapers tell us very little of what goes on in England; and it must be admitted that too often, on both sides of the Tweed, things have appeared in the press not calculated to heal differences or make for peace. Sarcasm may be very clever: it is sometimes useful: it is rarely helpful to good feeling, or to the amendment either of him who utters it or of him against whom it is directed. The putting forth of the finger and speaking vanity are among the things which Isaiah declares they must put away who desire to be called the restorers of the breach, the repairers of paths to dwell in.

Now you have taken in England a further step. The Second Interim Report of the Archbishops' Sub-Committee in "Connexion with the proposed World Conference on Faith and Order" is not, I presume, a document of the "official" character of a Resolution of a Lambeth Conference. It is nevertheless a paper of enormous significance and hopefulness, not alone as attested by the signatures it bears, but also on account of the exposition which it gives of the fourth point in the Lambeth Quadrilateral—its own condition "that continuity with the Historic Episcopate should be effectively preserved."

This Report is, however, exclusively for England; while my concern to-day is with the kindred question of union between the Anglican Church and the Scottish Presbyterian Churches. The day I trust is not far distant when we shall see a similar document issued over signatures from both sides of the Tweed. Need I say that when this comes to be drawn up, we of the North (like Bailie Nicol Jarvie with his business correspondents in London) "will hold no communications with you but on a footing of absolute equality." In none of the branches into which it is now divided—Presbyterian or Episcopalian—does the Church of Scotland forget that it is an ancient national Church which never admitted subjection to its greater sister of the South. We may have too good "a conceit of ourselves," but we shall at least, like the worthy bailie, be true and friendly. And indeed we—or some of us—were already moving towards something of the kind. The Second Interim Report—it bears the title "Towards Christian Unity"—is dated, I observe, March 1918. In Scotland, so early as the 29th of January, there was held at Aberdeen (historically the most natural place for such a purpose, for it was the city of the "Aberdeen Doctors" and their eirenic efforts) a conference—modest, unofficial, tentative—yet truly representative of the Church of Scotland, of the United Free Church, and of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which drew up, and has issued, a Memorandum[18] suggesting a basis for reunion in Scotland, very much on the lines of the Precedents of 1610, but suggesting such arrangements during a period of transition as shall secure that respect is paid to the conscientious convictions to be found on both sides. We shall not repeat the blunders of 1637 which ruined the happy settlement of 1610.

We have in view a method which shall neither deprive Scottish Episcopal congregations of the services they love, nor attempt to force a Prayer-Book on Presbyterian congregations till they wish it for themselves. We shall do nothing either to discredit or disparage our existing Presbyterian orders; we shall be no less careful not to obtrude on the Episcopal minority the services of a ministry they deem defective; which shall arrange that in the course of a generation the ministry of both communions shall be acceptable to all, while in the meanwhile it will be possible for both to work together. Alike in England and in Ireland this Memorandum, where it has been seen, has been favourably received. In Scotland it—and doubtless other plans—will probably be discussed in the coming winter by many a gathering similar to that which drew it up; and thus we shall be ready, by the time our union with the United Free Church is completed, to go on together to this further task.

By that time you in England will have made some progress towards the healing of your divisions. The wider settlement of ours would be greatly facilitated by an overt encouragement from you. England is "the predominant partner" in our happily united Empire: it is the Church of England that should take the initiative in a scheme for a United Church for the United Empire. She should take that initiative in Scotland.

Could there be a more appropriate occasion for proposing conference with a view to it at Edinburgh, than the day which sees the happy accomplishment of our present Scottish effort? Might not the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church (all of which have given tokens of a sympathetic interest in our union negotiations) unite to send deputations for the purpose to our first reunited General Assembly? Such deputations would not go away empty. And they would carry with them what would help not only the Cause of Christ throughout the ever-widening Empire He has given to our hands, but the fulfilment of His blessed will that all His people should be one. Auspice Spiritu Sancto. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] This Address, along with another delivered in St Paul's, has been published by Mr Robert Scott, of Paternoster Row, under the title Reunion, a Voice from Scotland.

[18] Printed in Reunion, a Voice from Scotland, pp. 101-107.



UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES



I

By the Right Rev. F. T. WOODS, D.D.

INTRODUCTION

He would be a dull man who did not respond to such a theme as the one with which I have been entrusted.

Before the war, in spite of much enlightenment of the social conscience, unity between classes was still far to seek. Indeed, the contemplation of the state of English society in those early months of 1914 was perhaps more calculated to drive the social reformer into pessimism than anything which has happened since. The rich were hunting for fresh pleasures, the poor were hunting for better conditions. The tendencies which were dragging these classes apart seemed stronger than those which were bringing them together. Then came the war, and it has done much to convert a forlorn hope into a bright prospect. This has happened not merely, or even mainly, owing to the fact that men of all classes are fighting side by side in the trenches, but rather owing to the fact that the war has cleared our minds, has exposed the real dangers of civilisation, and has placarded before the world, in terms which cannot be mistaken, the things which are most worth living for.

I propose to ask your attention to my subject under three heads. First I shall say something of the basis of class distinction, then I shall put before you some attempts which have been made at social unity, and in closing I shall try to estimate the hope of the present situation.

I

THE BASIS OF CLASS DISTINCTION

Birth and Property have been during most of human history the chief points on which class distinction has turned. Behind them both, I fear it must be confessed, there is that which lies at the root of all civilisation, namely force. I presume that the first class distinction was between the group of people who could command and the group who had to obey. The second group no doubt consisted in most cases of conquered enemies who were turned into slaves. They were outsiders, the men of a lower level.

But the master group, if I may so call it, would have its descendants, who by virtue of family relationships would seek to keep their position. This, I conclude, is the fountain head of that stream of blue blood which has played so large a part in class distinction. It is not difficult to make out a strong case for it from the point of view of human evolution. The processes of primitive warfare may have led to the survival of the fittest or the selection of the best. At a time when the sense of social responsibility was limited in the extreme, it may have been a good thing that the management of men should have rested mainly in the hands of those who by natural endowments and force of character came to the top. It is unnecessary to dwell at length on the immense influence both in our own country and elsewhere which this blood distinction of class has exercised. It is writ large in the history of the word "gentleman," both in the English word and its Latin ancestor. The Latin word "generosus," always the equivalent of "gentleman" in English-Latin documents, signifies a person of good family. It was used no doubt in this sense by the Rev. John Ball, the strike leader, as we should call him in modern terms, of the 14th century, in the lines which formed a kind of battlecry of the rebels:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

A writer of a century later, William Harrison, says: "Gentlemen be those whom their race and blood or at least their virtues do make noble and known."

But the distinction is older than this. According to Professor Freeman it goes back well nigh to the Conquest. Not indeed the distinction of blood, for that is much older, but the formation of a separate class of gentlemen. It has been maintained however by some writers that this is rather antedating the process, and that the real distinction in English life up to the 14th century was between the nobiles, the tenants in chivalry, a very large class which included all between Earls and Franklins; and the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, the ordinary citizens and burgesses. The widely prevalent notion that a gentleman was a person who had a right to wear coat armour is apparently of recent growth, and is possibly not unconnected with the not unnatural desire of the herald's office to magnify its work.

It is evident that noble blood in those days was no more a guarantee of good character than it is in this, for, according to one of the writers on the subject, the premier gentleman of England in the early days of the 15th century was one who had served at Agincourt, but whose subsequent exploits were not perhaps the best advertisement for gentle birth. According to the public records he was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with house-breaking, wounding with intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging for his life[19].

The first gentleman, commemorated by that name on an existing monument, is John Daundelion who died in 1445.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the chief occupation of gentlemen was fighting; but later on, when law and order were more firmly established, the younger sons of good families began to enter industrial life as apprentices in the towns, and there began to grow up a new aristocracy of trade. To William Harrison, the writer to whom I have already referred, merchants are still citizens, but he adds: "They often change estate with gentlemen as gentlemen do with them by mutual conversion of the one into the other."

Since those days the name has very properly come to be connected less with blue blood than—if I may coin the phrase—with blue behaviour. In 1714, Steele lays it down in the Tatler that the appellation of gentleman is never to be fixed to a man's circumstances but to his behaviour in them. And in this connexion we may recall the old story of the Monarch, said by some to be James II, who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son a gentleman: "I could make him a noble, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman."

Before we leave the class distinctions based mainly on birth and blood, it is well to remark that in England they have never counted for so much as elsewhere. It is true of course that the nobility and gentry have been a separate class, but they have been constantly recruited from below. Distinction in war or capability in peace was the qualification of scores of men upon whom the highest social rank was bestowed in reign after reign in our English history. Moreover, birth distinction has never been recognised in law, in spite of the fact that the manipulation of laws has not always been free from bias. The well known words of Macaulay are worth quoting in this connexion:

There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a peer, the younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newly made knights.

The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who could attract notice by his valour in battle.

... Good blood was indeed held in high respect: but between good blood and the privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary connection.... There was therefore here no line like that which in some other countries divides the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which his own children must descend.... Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present day, and which has produced many important moral and political effects[20].

If blood counted for much in distinctions of class, property counted for more. The original distinction between the "haves" and the "have nots" has persisted throughout history and is with us to-day.

In the ancient village, no doubt, the distinction was of the simplest. On the one hand was the man who by force or by his own energy became possessed of more cattle and more sheep than his fellows; on the other hand was the man who, in default of such property, was ready and willing to give his services to the bigger man, whether for wages, or as a condition of living in the village and sharing in the rights of the village fields and pastures. Here presumably we have the origin of that institution of Landlordism which still looms so large in our social life. In the early days it was probably more a matter of cattle than of land. The possessor of cattle in the village would hire out a certain number of them to a poorer neighbour, who would have the right to feed them on the common land. Thus, even in primitive times, a class distinction based on property began to grow up.

Early in history there was found in most villages a chief man who had the largest share of the land. Below him there would be three or four landowners of moderate importance and property. At the end of the scale were the ordinary labourers and villagers, among whom the rest of the village lands were divided as a rule on fairly equal terms.

Closely allied to this of course was the organisation of the village from the point of view of military service. Parallel to this more peaceful organisation of society was the elaborate Feudal System, by which, from the King downwards, lands were held in virtue of an obligation on the part of each class to the one above it to produce men for the wars in due proportion of numbers and equipment.

From this point of view property in land meant also property in men, labourers in peace and soldiers in war.

As time went on the class distinctions of birth and property began more and more to coincide. It was Dr Johnson who made the remark that "the English merchant is a new species of gentleman."

The form of property which was always held to be in closest connexion with gentle blood was land. This has been so in a pre-eminent degree since our English Revolution at the end of the 17th century. From that time onwards the smaller landowners, yeomen and squires with small holdings, begin to disappear and the landed gentry become practically supreme. Political power in a large measure rested with them, and the result was that numbers of men who had made money in trade were eager to use it in the purchase of land, for this meant the purchase of social and political influence.

It was no doubt this craze for the possession of land which led to the process of enclosing the common lands of the village, a process on which no true Englishman can look back in these days without shame and sorrow. It is no doubt arguable that from an economic point of view the productive power of the land was increased, that agriculture was more efficiently and scientifically managed by the comparatively few big men than it would have been by the many small men who were displaced. None the less the price was too high, for it meant a still further accentuation of class distinction. It meant the further enrichment of the big man, and the further impoverishment of the small man. And between the two there grew up a class of farmers, separate from the labourers, whose outlook on the whole did not make for those relations of neighbourliness and even kinship which had been among the fine characteristics of the ancient village.

Nor is this the end of the story, for the distinction between the "haves" and the "have nots" was still further accentuated, and the two classes driven still further apart, by the far-reaching Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century.

The alienation between the farmer and the labourer was exactly paralleled by the alienation which gradually crept in between the manufacturer and the workers. The growth of the factory system was indeed so rapid that only the keenest foresight could have provided against these evils. The same may be said of the amazing development of the towns, particularly in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, which quickly gathered round the new hives of industry. Unfortunately that foresight was lacking. On the one hand the science of town-planning had hardly been born, on the other hand a lightning accumulation of large fortunes turned the heads of the commercial magnates, dehumanised industry, and broke up the fellowship which in older and simpler days had obtained between the employer and his men.

It is a charge which we frequently bring against the enemy in these days, a charge only too well founded, that they are expert in everything except understanding human nature. The same may be said of those who were concerned in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The growing wealth of the country which should have united masters and men in a truer comradeship, and a richer life, achieved results which were precisely the opposite. It developed a greed of cash which we have not yet shaken off, and money was accumulated in the pockets of men who had had neither aptitude nor training in the art of spending it. The workers were reduced to a state not far removed from a salaried slavery, and the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" was perhaps more acute than at any other time in our history. The causes of this were many and complex. Not the least of them was the fact that the masters of industry were captured by a false theory of economics according to which the fund which was available for the remuneration of labour could not at any given time be greater or less than it was. Human agency could not increase its volume, it could only vary its distribution. And further, as every man has the right to sell his labour for what he can obtain for it, any interference between the recipients was held to be unjust.

"That theory," as Mr Hammond has told us, "became supreme in economics, and the whole movement for trade-union organisation had to fight its way against this solid superstition[21]."

The doctrine of free labour achieved a wonderful popularity; but then, as the writer I have just quoted reminds us: "Free labour had not Adam Smith's meaning: it meant the freedom of the employer to take what labour he wanted, at the price he chose and under the conditions he thought proper[22]."

More and more therefore the employers and the workers drifted apart, and the supreme misfortune was that the one power which might have drawn them together was itself in a state of semi-paralysis in regard to the corporate responsibility of the community. That power was religion. There were times, as I shall endeavour to point out later, when Christianity was able to produce an atmosphere of comradeship stronger than the differences of class. But to the very great loss of both country and Church this was not one of them.

At the moment when the corporate message of the Church was needed, it was looking the other way, and concentrating its thought on the individual. The Reformation was in large measure a revolt from the imperial to the personal conception of religion. I do not deny that this revolt was necessary and beneficial. But the reaction from the corporate aspect of Christianity went too far. When this reaction was further reinforced by the Puritan movement, which with all its strength and its fine austerity fastened its attention on the minutiae of personal conduct, and left the community as such almost out of sight, it is not surprising to find that religion at the end of the 18th, and through a large part of the 19th century, failed to produce just that sense of brotherhood which would have mitigated the whole situation and prevented much of the practical paganism which I have described.

Even the great revival connected with the name of John Wesley brought all its fire to bear on the conversion of the man, when the social unit which was most in need of that conversion was the community. The result of all this was that, partly owing to ignorance, partly owing to prejudice, partly owing to the misreading of the New Testament, the messengers of religion had no message of corporate responsibility for nation or class. There was no one to lift aloft the torch of human brotherhood over the dark and gloomy landscape of English life. So far from that, the people who figured large in religion were convinced quite honestly that the division of classes was a heaven sent order, with which it would be impious to interfere, and further that the main message of religion to the people at large was an authoritative injunction to good behaviour, and patient resignation to the circumstances in which Providence had placed them. The notion that the organisation of Society, particularly on its industrial side, was wholly inconsistent with the ideals of the New Testament never so much as entered their heads, and any suggestion to this effect would have been regarded not merely as revolutionary but sacrilegious.

I have ventured on this very rough description of class distinctions, before our modern days, because it is through the study of our forefathers' mistakes and a truer understanding of our forefathers' inspirations that we may hope to create a better world in the days that are coming.

II

ATTEMPTS AT SOCIAL UNITY

Let me ask your attention now to a few of the attempts which have been made to create a deeper social unity.

Some of these were naturally and inevitably developed in primitive days by the simple fact that "birds of a feather flock together."

Men engaged in pastoral pursuits gathered themselves into the tribe with its strong blood bond. The tillage of the fields led to the existence of the clan, with its family system and its elaborate organisation of the land. In the same way industrial activity produced the Guild, that is the grouping of men by crafts, a grouping which might well be revived and encouraged on a larger scale in the rearrangements of the future.

I need not remind you how large a place was occupied by the Guilds in English life. They were not Trade Unions in the modern sense, for they included both masters and men in one organisation. Nor must we attribute a modern meaning to those two phrases, masters and men, when we speak of the ancient Guild. For in a large measure every man was his own employer. He was a member of the league; he kept the rules; but he was his own master. The master did not mean the manager of the workmen, but the expert in the work. He was the master of the art in question, and though his fellows might be journeymen or apprentices, they all belonged to the same social class, and throughout the Guild there was a spirit of comradeship which was consecrated by the sanctions of religion.

For it was the Guilds which were the prime movers in organising those Miracle Plays which were the delight of the Middle Ages, and which formed the main outlet for that dramatic instinct which used to be so strong in England, and which paved the way for Shakespeare and the modern stage.

The Guild was not concerned mainly with money but with work, and still more with the skill and happiness of the worker, and its aim was to resist inequality. It was, in the pointed words of Mr Chesterton,

to ensure, not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed, but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers with their clothes; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the hundredth sheep; in short to keep the row of little shops unbroken like a line of battle[23].

The Guild in fact aimed at keeping each man free and happy in the possession of his little property, whereas the Trade Union aims at assembling into one company a large number of men who have little or no property at all, and who seek to redress the balance by collective action. The mediaeval Guild therefore will certainly go down to history as one of the most gallant attempts, and for the time being one of the most successful, to create a true comradeship among all who work, and to keep at a distance those mere class distinctions which, though their foundations are often so flimsy, tend to grip men as in an iron vice.

But I must not pass by another social organisation which looms very large in the old days, and which approached social unity from a side wholly different from those I have mentioned, namely from the military side: I mean the Feudal System. Here there has been much misunderstanding. Its very name seems to breathe class distinction. We have come casually and rather carelessly to identify it with the tyranny and oppression which exalted the few at the expense of the many. This point of view is however a good deal less than just. It is quite true that as worked by William the Norman and several of his successors the system became only too often an instrument of gross injustice and crass despotism; but at its best, and in its origin, it was based on the twin foundations of protection on the one hand and duty on the other. I will venture to quote a high authority in this connexion, namely Bishop Stubbs.

The Feudal System, with all its tyranny and all its faults and shortcomings, was based on the requirements of mutual help and service, and was maintained by the obligations of honour and fealty. Regular subordination, mutual obligation, social unity, were the pillars of the fabric. The whole state was one: the king represented the unity of the nation. The great barons held their estates from him, the minor nobles of the great barons, the gentry of these vassals, the poorer freemen of the gentry, the serfs themselves were not without rights and protectors as well as duties and service. Each gradation, and every man in each, owed service, fixed definite service, to the next above him, and expected and received protection and security in return. Each was bound by fealty to his immediate superior, and the oath of the one implies the pledged honour and troth of the other[24].

This system indeed was very far from perfect, but it certainly was an attempt to bind the nation together in one social unit, to provide a measure of protection for all, and to demand duties from all. It sought to lay equal stress on rights and duties. In this respect—and I am still thinking of the system at its best—it was far ahead of modern 19th century Industrialism, a system which might be described with but little exaggeration as laying sole emphasis on rights for one class and duties for the other.

But the supreme attempt which so far has been made to promote unity between classes has approached the problem from a far loftier standpoint; not industrial, nor military, but religious. And this attempt has been on a larger scale and on firmer foundations than any of the others, for it has sought to unite men in spite of their differences. It has tried, that is, to get below the varieties of race or family or occupation, and create a unity which, because it transcends them all, may hope to last. As a fact this attempt has so far surpassed all others, and has met with the greatest measure of success. And lest I should be suspected of prejudice I will quote an outside witness:

A very pregnant saying of T. H. Green was that during the whole development of man the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" has never varied, what has varied is the answer to the question—Who is my neighbour?... The influence upon the development of civilisation of the wider conception of duty and responsibility to one's fellow-men which was introduced into the world with the spread of Christianity can hardly be overestimated. The extended conception of the answer to the question Who is my neighbour? which has resulted from the characteristic doctrines of the Christian religion—a conception transcending all the claims of family, group, state, nation, people or race and even all the interests comprised in any existing order of society—has been the most powerful evolutionary force which has ever acted on society. It has tended gradually to break up the absolutisms inherited from an older civilization and to bring into being an entirely new type of social efficiency[25].

Or to take another witness equally unprejudiced, who puts the same truth more tersely still, the late Professor Lecky. "The brief record of those three short years," referring to Christ's life, "has done more to soften and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and exhortations of moralists." For a third witness we will call Mazzini. "We owe to the Church," he declared, "the idea of the unity of the human family and of the equality and emancipation of souls." That this is amply borne out by the history of the Church in early days is not difficult to prove. The unexceptionable evidence of a Pagan writer is here very much to the point. Says Lucian of the Christians:

"Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren, one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything ... affects their common interests[26]."

In the same way the ancient Christian writer Tertullian observes with characteristic irony: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. Only look, they say, 'look how they love one another[27]!'" It is not surprising that this was so when you look into the writings which form the New Testament. Apart from the words and example of the Founder of Christianity, few men have ever lived who were more alive to existing social distinctions, and also to the splendour of that scheme which transcends them all, than St Paul. In proof of this it is sufficient to point to that immortal treatise on social unity which is commonly called the Epistle to the Ephesians. In this the fundamental secret is seen to consist, not in a rigid system but in a transforming spirit working through a divine Society in which all worldly distinctions are of no account. Slavery, for instance, was, in his view, and was actually in process of time, to be abolished not by a stroke of the pen but by a change of ideal. Nor is the witness lacking in writings subsequent to the New Testament. To instance one of the earliest. In an official letter sent by the Roman Church to the Christians in Corinth towards the end of the first century, in a passage eulogising the latter community this suggestive sentence occurs: "You did everything without respect of persons."