the man who has long questioned whether there is a
God, who has doubted whether there is any morally perfect Being, any
Spirit existent greater and purer than man, you have but to show Christ,
and through His unconquerable love and untemptable holiness reveal to
him a God.

But as it was not by telling men about God that Christ convinced men
that somewhere there existed a holy God who cared for them, but by
showing God's holiness and love present to them in His own person, so
our words may fail to accomplish much if our life does not reveal a
presence men cannot but recognise as Divine. It was by being one with
the Father Christ revealed Him; it was the Father's will His life
exhibited. And the extension of this to the whole world of men is the
utmost of Christ's desire. All will be accomplished when all men are
one, even as Christ and the Father are already one.

This text is often cited by those who seek to promote the union of
churches. But we find it belongs to a very different category and much
higher region. That all churches should be under similar government,
should adopt the same creed, should use the same forms of worship, even
if possible, is not supremely desirable; but real unity of sentiment
towards Christ and of zeal to promote His will is supremely desirable.
Christ's will is all-embracing; the purposes of God are wide as the
universe, and can be fulfilled only by endless varieties of
dispositions, functions, organisations, labours. We must expect that, as
time goes on, men, so far from being contracted into a narrow and
monotonous uniformity, will exhibit increasing diversities of thought
and of method, and will be more and more differentiated in all outward
respects. If the infinitely comprehensive purposes of God are to be
fulfilled, it must be so. But also, if these purposes are to be
fulfilled, all intelligent agents must be at one with God, and must be
so profoundly in sympathy with God's mind as revealed in Christ that,
however different one man's work or methods may be from another's, God's
will shall alike be carried out by both. If this will can be more freely
carried out by separate churches, then outward separation is no great
calamity. Only when outward separation leads one church to despise or
rival or hate another is it a calamity. But whether churches abide
separate or are incorporated in outward unity, the desirable thing is
that they be one in Christ, that they have the same eagerness