The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-29


 Jesus Is the bond of church unity. By church unity do not mean necessarily
 the organic unity of believers in one de- nomination, though that may be the l logical outcome. Spiritual rather than formal unity seems to be everywhere | the presentation of the New Testament
 The history of the church in the past mas been an unsavory record of bigotry sectarianism, disunion, schisnl, separa- tlon and intolerance. The tendency of to-day IS one of return, fellowship, charity and reunion. Such unions are born Of the Spirit of God. But disunion IS the spirit of ignorance, bigotry, mar rowness and shortsightedness. But when We stop to thank God we find a wonderful feeling of unity and brother hood. This finds suggestive illustra- ton in the first Thanksgiving service in this land when the little band of forty f1ve pilgrims in October, 1921, sat down to their first Thanksgiving dinner. They mad as guests ninety Indians warriors. If the spirit of Jesus Christ manifested 1 that day had continued, as it did in 1 William Penn's relation to the Indians, one of the saddest chapters the history | Of the New World would never have been written. To-day on occasions of Thanksgiving we get together. Tn our church music is another sign of the ] quiet advance that is being made | toward Christian union. There was a day when the Methodist Hymnal con- | sisted Wesley's hymns. There was a day when the heretic's voice could not be heard in the Episcopal Hymnal, and when the Presbyterians only sang Psalms. Look at your church hymnal to-day. Take the Methodist Hymnal for example The first edition contain ed little else than the hymns of the Wesleys. In the present edition 330 oth- CT authors appear, fifteen of whom are Roman Catholics, and as many more Unitarians, while Congregationalists Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Moravians and even Quakers are repre- sented in due proportion. Whatever sins of omission or commission, our bigotry may be responsible for, we have invited heretical saints into our pulpits and service, in very real way, through the hymnal. We often denounce the Romanists and then all unconsciousy open our hymnal and sing Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light" one of the very gems of all hymnology. And was not it's author one of the very saints of God? It was also a Roman Catholic Frederick w. Faber who wrote Pilgrims of the Night 70 Paradise" and There's Wilderness i'm Gods Mercy" Wesley showed his tol- erance toward the Catholic church by inviting priest to preach in his pulpit on one occasion. We disagree with our Unitarian friends on the personality of Christ, but who would wish to take
 Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to
 Thee,
 Fen thought it be a cross that rais-
 eth me-
 out of the hymnal because it was writ ten by Unitarian? Wesley went so far as to publishe the biography of Unitarian, Thomas Firmin, whose real piety, notwithstanding his erroneous notions of the Trinity, he does not dare deny" We sometimes think our Epis- copalian friends have smothered vital religious life in mere form, but 1t was Cowper of the English church who wrote the great revival hymn of the language, There is a Fountain Filled With Blood" 1t was Bishop He Der who wrote the great Missionary hymn, From Greenland's Icy Noun tains," and an English rector, Barring Gould, wrote the battle hymns of Chris tfan activity, Onward Christian Sol dier." As for Nonconformists, it was Toplady, the Calvanist, so bitter in controversy, pastor of an independent congregation, who, dying of consump- ton at thirty-six, wrote Rock of Ages" now the most popular hymn in the English language. It was Watts the Nonconformist, who wrote that pean of praise, Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come" It was Ray Palmer, the Congregatlonalist, who wrote the sublime prayer My Faith Looks Up to Thee" It was Charles Wesley who wrote the universal favorite Jesus Lover of My Soul" and it was John | Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker, who | wrote l 70 Lord and Master of us all
 Whateer our name or sign, | We own Thy sway, we heed Thy call; |
 We test our lives by Thine"
 And you could not tell by these | IJlllIS WHO WdS Nio tItoipSlNdIys I There is not discord, not Jar, in the | sweet spirit of harmony and praise | from Charles Wesley's 70 For Thou i sand Tongues to Sing to the closing i "Te- Deum" taken from the Roman | Breviary. And what is true of the | Methodist Hymnal is true of others. | Though representing the greatest di- | of theological thought here is | perfect unanimity of heart. It is an apocalypse of heaven, when all the l saints of God shall sing together.
 Names and sects and parties fall,
 But Thou. o Christ, art all in all"
 What is needed is to carry this spir- it of song into thought and deed; life l and action, to have, if not absolute or ganic unity, at least what Wesley called for, "A league both offensive and defensive with every soldier of Je- sus Christ" And we are coming on a pace toward that goal The Young Mems Christian association is one of the signs of the times.
 But the great distinctive bond of unity lies in the Master Himself; and It is in the present day conception and of the Christ that our hope lies We have had the centuries of the painted Christ and the idealizations of