Professor Griggs has said that the hunger for unity and for eternity are the two deepest longings of the human soul. Me might fittingly have added that it is quite impossible for us to think of the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which love is the all-governing law, without recognizing the inherent unity of the subjects of this kingdom together with the naturalness of those prophecies of Christ's universal reign which give assurance of the oneness of his followers, a oneness the nature and completeness of which was defined by our Lord when he said, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."
In the light of the anticipations of Messianic prophecy, and of our Lord's prayer, it is apparent that the unity of all true Christians is both natural and inevitable. In the early days of Christianity the disciples were entirely of one mind, so that they could and did inaugurate a type of communism which met the highest material sense of sincerity and unselfishness,—"they had all things common." But alas! pitifully soon the repellant and disintegrating forces of personal sense asserted themselves to rend this bond of unity, and apart from the communality pertaining to the darkness of the Middle Ages, strifes and contentions have ever been a distinctively prominent feature of religious history. As one thinks of these facts he cannot fail to see that the separations of those who are equally honest and sincere in their aspiration and endeavor to be loyal to the Christ teaching, are to be explained only on the assumption of their failure rightly to apprehend this teaching. Regardless of human phenomena, the oneness of Christian truth is axiomatically inherent, and its exponents can be at war only when false human-sense interpretation has usurped the place of demonstrable understanding.
The unnaturalness, unworthiness, and incongruity of "the strife of creeds" is coming home to Christian thought with ever increasing persuasiveness, and it is undoubtedly true that more has been accomplished toward Christian unity during the last twenty-five years than in all the previous periods since the great reformers made their escape from a degraded but dominant ecclesiasticism. This universal longing for Christian unity is explained in part by many things. The wondrous achievements of combined endeavor in the business world have led Christian men of affairs to see the imperative need of a union of the forces of Christian evangelization, if Satan's strongholds at home and in foreign fields are to be successfully assaulted. The vantage of combination has never been realized as it is today. Furthermore, thoughtful men are coining to see that most interdenominational contentions have been about things which have nothing whatever to do with that Christlike disposition and conduct which is the heart and soul of Christianity and which is found in individual representatives of every sect. They are perceiving that the bulk of the issues which have led to division could have been dropped at once and forever without depleting any really valuable asset of Christian faith.
