nity between denominations of Christians derives special
significance from being placed in connexion with all those other cases
in regard to which the promotion of unity is to be considered. If it
belongs to the genius of Christianity to be a uniting power, it is above
all in the sphere of professed and organised Christianity, where
Christians are grouped together _as_ Christians, that its influence in
producing union should be shewn. If it fails in this here, what hope, it
may well be asked, can there be that it should be effective, when its
principles and motives cannot be applied with the same directness and
force? In the very assumption, then, which underlies this whole course
of lectures, that Christianity can unite men, we have a special reason
for considering our relations to one another as members of Christian
bodies, with regard to this matter of unity.

But we are also all of us aware that the divisions among Christians are
often severely commented on by those who refuse to make any definite
profession of the Christian Religion, and are given by them sometimes as
a ground of their own position of aloofness. It is true that strictures
passed on the Christian Religion and its professors for failures in
this, as well as in other respects, frequently shew little discernment,
and are more or less unjust. So far as they are made to reflect on
Christianity itself, allowance is not made for the nature of the human
material upon which and with which the Christian Faith and Divine Grace
have to work. And when Christians of the present day are treated as if
they were to blame for them, sufficient account is not taken of the long
and complex history, and the working of motives, partly good as well as
bad, through which Christendom has been brought to its present divided
condition. Still we cannot afford to disregard the hindrance to the
progress of the Christian Faith and Christian Life among men created by
the existing divisions among Christians. Harm is caused by them in
another way of which we may be, perhaps, less conscious. They bring loss
to ourselves individually within the denominations to which we severally
belong. We should gain incalculably from the strengthening of our faith
through a wider fellowship with those who share it, the greater volume
of evidence for the reality of spiritual things which would thus be
brought before us; and from the enrichment of our spiritual knowledge
and life through closer acquain