The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-01-08
SPEEDY END OF THE WORLD PREDICTED BY A CIRCLE OF
 NOTABLE CHRISTIAN HEADS
Prophecy Based Upon Scripture Quoted to Show That Present War Is Fulfilling Words of the Saviour
 Regarding the Coming of Judgment Day

go religious denominations to speak for them all. The Young Mems Chris tian association. on 24 hours notice was ready to take care of the sol diers. in behalf of all the churches, who createId it. Under the General Wartime Commission of the Church es the work of the denominational bodies, the camp pastors outside the camps and the chaplains and Y. M. c. A. secretaries within the camps, are brought into cooperation, imped- ed, to be sure, by the Limitations of our persistent human individualism, and yet in an earnest spiritual unity. City after city which had never given the matter serious thought before is forming its federation of churches with & common headquarters and common administrative representa- tive. The movement for Christian CO., operation, not without some caution, it is true. is moving in a larger circle upon matters of common interest to the nation and the world. Consulta- ton is daily held between represent ative Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jew, and the delegation of 50 rel1g- ious leaders in conference with the President of the United States is equally divided between Catholic and Protestant.
 Out in the field, so the French chaplains tell us, Protestant and Catholic chaplains, in the hour Of ne cessity, forget all except that they are the ministers of the same God to the same suffering humanity, and our chaplains, as they are all clothed in the same khaki, will be clothed with the same indistinguishable religious spirit. For three years a constant stream of contributions has gone across the seas, not from Presbyter- ian here to Presbyterian there, but from the Christians of America to the Huguenot Christians of France. It 1 has not been, to be sure; confer ence on Christian unity in faith and polity. It has been simply mutual service with the sense of a spiritual oneness. Indeed, it may be that larger resultant service has been given because diversity has been per mitted in unity.
 During the past quarter of a cen tury this process has been going on, Christian unity being approached through common participation in concrete and common tasks. Its deepening has now come through the mutuality of common suffering. The very day on which this message is be- ing written there comes a cable from the archbishop of Sweden to the Fed eral Council of the Churches of Christ of Christians of five neutral nations, and the message is very simple one; it simply says. Finland is in. state of famine"
 Leaders in Christian education rep
 resenting all Christian bodies are now in weekly conference preparing their study courses They are not courses in denominational history and polity. The subject is. What is Amer
 ican Christianity going to do for re- conciliaton and reconstruction in E1urope?' Herbert Adams Gibbons carries the causes of the war back for four centuries and. coincidentally, in celebrating the four hundredth ami versary of the Reformation, with all it's great advances, we are obliged to take account of nearly four centuries
 of disintegration in religious forces.
 For about 375 years the process was largely that of the multiplication
 of denominations in isolation, or, worse still, in competition and almost never in co-operaton. The movement for serious Christian cooperation has
 been in existence for about 10 years.
 If we think of that decade over
 against those 375 years of Protestant
 dissociation, the story of present oay
 Christianity is one of progress.
 The world is in struggle for de-
 mocracy, and democracy is simply
 another name for spiritual unity We
 knew that man has soul; we are
 learning that nations have souls. We
 are beginning to discover that the : world has a soul. The prophecy Of
 Jesus is being fulfilled in our search
 for spiritual unity.
 There is little hope for the future
 in leagues of nations and world courts
 for political uniformity, unless some
 institution in human form finds and
 expresses this unity of spirit and ideal With all their human limita-
 tions, the churches still symbolize
 those ideals and stand for that spir-
 itual democracy which must underlie
 the new political democracy. The
 issue is determined bytwo processes: first, within each nation the unifca- tion of it's own spiritual forces, and,
 second, the rapidly developing fra
 ternity of the churches of one nation
 with another.
 The reader asks 'fWhat do you
 mean, one church." Yes, we mean
 one church. But how far it's unity will be that of identity and how far that of diversity we have not the
 wisdom to answer. The council at . Washington did not know it, perhaps, but it really formulated the new con- mon creed in these historic words: As members of the church of
 Christ, the hour lays upon us special
 duties:
 To purge our own hearts clean of arrogance and selishness.
 To steady and inspire the astion. To keep ever before the eyes of , ourselves and of our Allies the ends for which he fight
 , To hold our own nation true to it's } professed aims of justice, liberty, and
 brotherhood.
 : To testify to our fellow Christians s in every land, most of all to those r from whom for the time we are 3 eStranged, our consciousness of un- . broken unity in Christ. . To unite in the fellowship of ser