The record-union., 1897-04-25

| do not. Yet most of them are ready to
| admit that others beside themselves
are true and regular Christian churches
and are willing to receive from them
| courteous messages at their national
meetings. Yet these hundred and more
denominations have no public, visible
formal bond Of union; the Evangelical
Alliance is hardly such For all the
world can see. they are rivals: and such
they very often are. They do not come
| together in towns, or cities, or coun-
| ties. or States, or in the nature of affec-
tionate fellowship and consultation
Their mere Christian young peoples
societies may do so, but the churches
| themselves do not. Now this attitude
of scarce more than armed truce is
simply wrong. 1t is a sin before God
1t ought to be corrected. We heartily
approve the efforts made to bring to-
gether into corporate union. here and
there, two or three denominations. We
earnestly wish that Northern and
Southern Methodists, the Congrega-
tionalists. and the Christian Connec-
ton might unite; but such union, de-
sirable as it would be, would not heal
the main divisions A far larger ne
Cessity is that which would unite in
confederation of council and service
those denominations which cannot vet
combine in corporate unity. Here is
work for those who love the unity of
the faith
1t is curious says the Christian
Register" Unit) of Boston, ito see how
some ministers and theologianS, not
beng able to dispute the new facts, try
to bend them to fit the old theories. The
geological strata We're not twisted and
turned more in making the planet than
the facts of geology were bent and
twisted to make them conform to the
myths of Genesis, in the spirit of the
eminent theoiogian who contended that
God did make the earth in six days, and
that the fossils could all have been
stirred in as Dlums are stirred into a
pudding. Poor Hugh Miller killed him
self, it is supposed because he could not
succeed in reconciling geology with
Genesis. The difficulty was not in recon-
Cling two classes of facts. but in recon
Cling the facts of science with the
fables of literature. When this is recog-
nized, then the difficulties disappear.
that is, they disappear for those who are
simply seeking the truth A study of
geology showed us that we had not
understood the history of the earth; but
it also showed us, what Biblical criti-
cism is showing, that we had not under
stood the Bible When we understand
both, there is no difficulty between them.
any more than between the facts of
chemistry and those of astronomy. AS
tronOmy was for a long time a mytho-
logical science. So long as it remained
so, it could not take it's place in the
order of physical sciences; but now that
the astrologist has given place to the
astronomer, we know something of the
law of the worlds, and do not confound
exact knowledge with shepherd dreams
about them
Make it clear that the earliest of the
Gospels did not take it's present form I'M
til a full century after the ascension of
Christ" says the Waterman" (BapD
of Boston, and you have secured ample
space for the operation of all kinds of
vagaries and myth-makings Thou
sands of Christian believers, who, like
ourselves, do not believe that the New
Testament could have been evolved from
Intellectual tendencies or myth making
propensities in five times a hundred
years nevertheless have felt that, if it
could be proved that a gap of a century
interveneS between the events and the
writings. the New Testament lacks a