Arizona republican., 1899-05-11
GROWTH OF CHURCH UNITY.
Rags and Remnants Of Old-time Intoi-
 erance Out of Place in Our Day.

Justice Brewer of the United States
 supreme court has an article in the
 latest number of the Independent, in
 which he scores dencminational riv-
 airy and predicts that the llxentieth century will be noted f0r, greater unity in church life No enc with eyes to see
 will question the writers forecast Of closer and mcre cordial relations be- tween all the denominations. but per haps his condemnation of the past riv- alGy is too sweeping to be altogether just The nineteenth century has been one of denominaitional strife, and the twentieth will be enc of greater unity, but does not all strength come through strife? Were not the narrow minded aosdlities of the opposing church fac tions as necessary phase of evolution as were the perpetual combass Of feu-
 dalfsm in bringing abcrt centralized governments? Justice Brewer sees the
 evil of denoninaticnai strife, but he fails to see the good which he praises has grown cut of the strife by a nat
 ural and necessary process.
 The foolishness of the bitter intol- erance shown by !cIle Protestant de- nomination toward another, and of the perennial quarrel between Catholics and Prctestants, is apparent enough today. The hard and fast lines that made it almost ar act Of heresy for Presbyterian to go into a Methodist church half century ago are now vanished forever, and the memory uf the cid prejudices rrovCkes 9 smile The intolerance that formerly made it impossible for a Protestant and q Cathcgic to sit on the same platform, not to mention allueRding each others churches, is rapidly passing away. The parliament of religions in Chicago stands near une end Of the era of church feujaiisrn
 Justice Brewo- shows the absurGity of the old rivary in q humorous an- ecdote. Two regiments, Cne from h. diana and the other from Ohio, were camped together during the civil war The Indiana chaplain was an earnest man and succeeded in converting many Of the soldiers in his regiment When it was reported to the Ohio colonel that forty Indiana sc3diers had been bap- tizd3 he promptly issued an order to detail sixty of his men for baptism, saying that he would be blankety- blanked if any Hoosier regiment should have mere Christians in it than the Fourth Chio
 It is well tci denounce the rags and remnants of the old intolerance. They are out of place in the free air of the neiR day. Nevertheless, enc cannot agree With Justice Brewer in seeing only misfortune in the old rivalry that n ultiplied the number Of charitable institutions, missionary societies, eel leges, and universities, and filled every city, tclwn and village with many weak and struggling churches instead of a few : eng ard vigorous organiza- tions." Loyalty 10 weak enterprise is sometimes mere potent than mem bershir in fcuTishing congregation The Preaaait is an era of concentration, but the merits of a great steel mill need net imply a denun ciation Of the many small and crude blacksmith shctlts frc'n which it sprung. The vil- lage blacksmith was necessity in his day, and so, perhaps, was the narrow dencminatiOcal preae.le-,. Chicago Tribune.