grander height of his coronation is yet beyond, and on that sublime summit that overtops all others he will welcome to a share of his regal dignities those whose lives have been a discourse in action, speaking of his cross to men by bearing his cross before them, and for them, filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in their own flesh for his body's sake which is the church!

THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM.

BY PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D., OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.

"Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us that the world may believe that thou didst send me."-JOHN 17: 20, 21.

THE DIFFICULTY OF THE PROBLEM.

"WITH men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

This answer of our Savior to the question of his disciples "Who can be saved?" may well be applied to the question, "How shall the many sections of the Christian world be united?"

When St. Paul entered the Eternal City as an obscure prisoner, chained to a rude heathen soldier, no philosopher or historian could have foreseen the conversion of the Roman empire to the religion of Jesus of Nazareth; and yet in less than three hundred years the crowned successor of Nero appeared, as a worshipper of Christ, among the bishops of the Council of Nicæa, and the symbol of shame and defeat had become the symbol of glory and victory.

When Augustin, an humble monk, baptized the painted. Anglo-Saxon savages of Kent, he did not dream that he was laying the foundation of Christian England with its missions encircling the globe.

Columbus died in the belief that he had discovered, not a continent, but merely a western passage to the East Indies; and Pope Alexander VI., in the exercise of his authority as the arbiter of Christendom, divided the New World between Catholic Spain and Portugal; but Providence intended to give the control of North America to the Anglo-Saxon race and to make it a home of religious freedom and progress.

"Deus habet suas horas et moras." A thousand years are with God as one day, and he may accomplish in one day the work of a thousand years. Sooner or later, in his own good time, and in a manner far better than we can devise or hope, he will, by the power of his Spirit, unite all his children into one flock under one Shepherd.

THE EXISTING UNITY.

The reunion of Christendom presupposes an original union which has been marred and obstructed, but never entirely destroyed. The theocracy of the Jewish dispensation continued during the division of the kingdom and during the Babylonian exile. Even in the darkest time, when Elijah thought that Israel was wholly given to idolatry, there were seven thousand-known only to God-who had never bowed their knees to Baal. The church of Christ has been one from the beginning, and he has pledged to her his unbroken presence "all the days to the end of the world." The one invisible church is the soul which animates the divided visible churches. All true believers are members of the mystical body of Christ.

"The saints in heaven and on earth

But one communion make:

All join in Christ, their living Head,
And of his grace partake."

Let us briefly mention the prominent points of unity which underlie all divisions.

Christians differ in dogmas and theology, but agree in the fundamental articles of faith which are necessary to salvation : they believe in the same Father in heaven, the same Lord and Savior, and the same Holy Spirit, and can join in every clause of the Apostles' Creed, of the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Te Deum.

They are divided in church government and discipline, but all acknowledge and obey Christ as the Head of the church and chief Shepherd of our souls.

They differ widely in modes of worship, rites, and ceremonies, but they worship the same God manifested in Christ, they surround the same throne of grace, they offer from day to day the same petitions which the Lord has taught them, and can sing the same classical hymns, whether written by Catholic or Protestant,

Greek or Roman, Lutheran or Reformed, Calvinist or Methodist, Episcopalian or Presbyterian, Pædo-Baptist or Baptist. Some of the best hymn-writers-as Toplady and Charles Wesley-were antagonistic in theology; yet their hymns-" Rock of Ages," and "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," are sung with equal fervor by Calvinists and Methodists. Newman's "Lead, kindly Light" will remain a favorite hymn among Protestants, although the author left the Church of England and became a cardinal of the Church of Rome. "In the Cross of Christ I glory," and "Nearer, my God, to Thee," were written by devout Unitarians, yet have an honored place in every trinitarian hymnal.

There is a unity of Christian scholarship of all creeds, which aims at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This unity has been strikingly illustrated in the Anglo-American Revision of the Authorized Version of the Scriptures, in which about one hundred British and American scholars-Episcopalians, Independents, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Friends, and Unitarians, harmoniously co-operated for fourteen years (from 1870 to 1884). It was my privilege to attend almost every meeting of the American Revisers in the Bible House at New York, and several meetings of the British Revisers in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey; and I can testify that, notwithstanding the positive convictions of the scholars of the different communions, no sectarian issue was ever raised; all being bent upon the sole purpose of giving the most faithful idiomatic rendering of the original Hebrew and Greek. The English Version, in its new as well as its old form, will continue to be the strongest bond of union among the different sections of English-speaking Christendom-a fact of incalculable importance for private devotion and public worship.

Formerly, exegetical and historical studies were too much controlled by, and made subservient to, apologetic and polemic ends; but now they are more and more carried on without prejudice, and with the sole object of ascertaining the meaning of the text and the facts of history upon which creeds must be built.

Finally, we must not overlook the ethical unity of Christendom, which is much stronger than its dogmatic unity and has never been seriously shaken. The Greek, the Latin, and the Protestant churches, alike, accept the Ten Commandments as ex

plained by Christ, or the law of supreme love to God and love to our neighbor, as the sum and substance of the Law, and they look up to the teaching and example of our Savior as the purest and most perfect model for universal imitation.

THE DIVISIONS OF CHRISTENDOM.

The unity and harmony of the Christian church were threatened and disturbed from the beginning, partly by legitimate controversy, which is inseparable from progress, partly by ecclesiastical domination and intolerance, partly by the spirit of pride, selfishness, and narrowness which tends to create heresy and schism. Hence the frequent exhortations of the apostles to avoid strife and contention, and to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

The church had hardly existed twenty years when it was brought to the brink of disruption by the question of circumcision as a condition of church membership and salvation, and would have been split into a Jewish church and a Gentile church had not the wisdom and charity of the apostles prevented such a calamity at the Council of Jerusalem. Not long afterward the same irritating question produced at Antioch a temporary alienation even between Paul and Peter.

The party spirit which characterized the philosophical schools of Greece manifested itself in the congregation at Corinth, and created four divisions, calling themselves respectively after Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ (in a sectarian sense). Against this evil the apostle raised his indignant protest: "Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized into the name of Paul?" (I. Cor. 1:13.) If it is wrong to give a church the name of an inspired apostle, can it be right to call it after an uninspired teacher, though he be as great as Luther or Wesley?

1. Many schisms arose in the early ages before and after the Council of Nicæa. Almost every great controversy resulted in the excommunication of the defeated party, who organized a separate sect if they were not exterminated by the civil power. The Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, and Copts, who seceded from the Orthodox Greek Church, continue to this day as relics of dead controversies. The schism of the Donatists, who were once as numerous and as well organized in North Africa as the