St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-01-29
SERMON ON CHURCH UNITY
Or. HEFFR0N SAYS THERE rs YET NO
TRUE UNITK
THE POINT OF DIFFERENCE.
The Brotherhood of Man and the
Fatherhood OF God Is Agreed
Upon, but There Should BE
Also an Agreement Upon
the Idea of Divine Revela-
ton

Father Hebron preached at the
cathedral yesterday evening on the sub
Ject of christian Unity" Following
is digest of his remarks:
The bringing of the churches to-
gether with some semblance of unity is
the dream of our day. So far no great
measure of success has crowned the
endeavor. The very effort is a confess
sion that unity has somehow been lost.
for we do not seek what we already
possess. The most that has been done
is to emphasize the brotherhood of
man and the fatherhOOd of God and
then work in unison on the plane of
philanthropy with more or less of
mutual forbearance. This is well, but
we must not forget that after all such
unity may be formed and maintained
on mere natural grounds, excluding en-
tirely the idea of divine revelation,
while the Christian religion and hence
the Christian church is moth
ing il not divine and super
natural. The moment the test
of divinity is applied to the truths on
which the whole structure of Chris
tianity is based, there is a parting.
Mems minds are unsettled about the
divinity and character of Christ and His
teachings; the divine authority of
Scripture is minimized and apostolic
tradition is cast aside as of little mo-
ment. IL is easy to see how Christian
unity with such vital questions as these
In dispute is no unity at all, but mere
deluSion. The very expression we so
often hear, the ''unity of the Christian
churches" is itself an i'll omen, as if
Christ had established churches and not
a church. 1t is useless to resort to the
vain subterfuge of ninvisible church,
for Christ's church is visible church
and must possess visible unity.
The church is society, pos
sesSing all the attributes of human
visible and social organization.
Christ went about preaching and teach
Ing, the apostles preached and taught
and governed with authority. The
Holy Ghost descended YiSibly on the
visible mascent church. Three thou
sand souls and again five thousand,
listened, believed and entered through
the visible portal of baptism. Then
there are the parallels of the field in
which wheat and cookie grew, the feast
where good and bad sat down together,
the sheepfold in which were sheep and
goats. These parallels refer to the
church which cannot thus be invisible,
made up only of the just. The church
Is spoken of as a Kingdom, city, a
mouse, sheepfOld. "a city built upon
mountain cannot be hid" The church
Is such city III its visible unity. The
church is conceived through the
preaching and the hearing of the
word of God, it is born by
baptism, 1t is fed through the sacra-
mentS, it is governed through It'll pastors
by eternal and manifest laws. all of
Which place her evident and conspic-
uous before the eyes of men. The
church has indeed its internal and
spiritual life, but this life is not the
church any more than the human soul
Is man The church of Christ must be
visible; it must be seen by meE that,
Dehoidlng it, they may enter it. "And
there shall be prepared in the last days
the mountain of the house of the Lord
on the summit of the mountains, and it
shall be elevated above the hills and all
nations shall flow into it. And many
people shall go forth and say: Come,
let us ascend to the mountain of the
Lord and the house of the God of Jacob,
and He shall teach us His ways and We
Shall walk i'll His paths.'" It's this WIS.,
lble church OH the mountain top that
must be one and undivided