tance with a variety of types of
Christian character and experience; and not least from that moral
training which is to be obtained through common action, in proportion to
the effort that has to be made in order to understand the point of view
of others, and the suppression of mere egoism that is involved.

These are strong reasons for aiming at Christian unity. But further
there comes to all of us at this time a powerful incentive to reflection
on the subject, and to such endeavours to further it as we can make, in
the signs of a movement towards it, the greater prominence which the
subject has assumed in the thought of Christians, the evidence of more
fervent aspirations after it, the clearer recognition of the injury
caused by divisions. I remember that some 40 or more years ago, one of
the most eminent and justly esteemed preachers of the day defended the
existence of many denominations among Christians on the ground that
through their competition a larger amount of work for the advance of the
kingdom of God is accomplished. We are not so much in love with
competition and its effects in any sphere now. And it should always have
been perceived that, whatever its rightful place in the economic sphere
might be, it had none in the promotion of purely moral and spiritual
ends. The preacher to whom I have alluded did not stand alone in his
view, though perhaps it was not often so frankly expressed. But at least
acquiescence in the existence of separated bodies of Christians, as a
thing inevitable, was commoner than it is now.

In the new attitude to this question of the duty of unity that has
appeared amongst us there lies an opportunity which we must beware of
neglecting. It is a movement of the Spirit to which it behoves us to
respond energetically, or it will subside. Shakespeare had no doubt a
different kind of human enterprises mainly in view when he wrote:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

But this observation is broadly true of all human progress. An advance
of some kind in the relations of men to one another, or the remedying of
some abuse, begins to be urged here and there, and for a time those who
urge it are but little listened to. Then almost suddenly (as it seems)
the minds of many, one hardly knows why, become occupied with it. If in
the generation when