The momentary triumph of evil over
good, the passing victory that yet means the banishment of religion from
the world, and the assurance of disaster still greater than that which
is now upon us unless every man bends all his energies to the task of
making the will of God prevail, first in himself, and so in the secular
and ecclesiastical societies in and through which he plays his part in
the life of the world--these are the fruits of a divided Christendom.

I honestly believe that the first real step towards reunion would be a
prompt cessation of the whole process of criticism, vilification and
abuse, one of the other, that now marks the attitude of what are known
as "church periodicals." Roman, Anglican, Protestant, are all alike, for
all maintain a consistent slanging of each other. I have in mind in
particular weekly religious papers in the United States which maintain
departments almost wholly made up of attacks on Roman Catholicism and
the derision of incidents of bad taste or illiteracy in the Protestant
denominations, and others which lose no opportunity to discredit or
abuse the Episcopal Church and the Protestant denominations, and finally
a curiously malevolent newspaper representing the worst type of
Protestant ignorance and prejudice, which exists on its libelous and
indecent and dishonest assaults on Catholicism wherever it may be found.
These are not alone, for the condition of ascerbity and nagging is
practically universal. It merely echoes the pulpit and a portion of the
general public. We all know of the so called "church" in Boston that is
the forum of "escaped nuns" and "unfrocked priests," but in many places
of better repute the sermon that bitterly attacks Christian Science, or
"High Church Episcopalianism," or the errors of Protestantism generally,
or the "usurpations of Rome" is by no means unknown, while elsewhere
than in Ireland, the public as a whole finds much pleasure in bating any
religion that happens to differ from its own,--or offends its sense of
the uselessness of all religion. Let us have a new "Truce of God," and
for the space of a year let all clergy, lecturers, newspapers, religious
journals, and private individuals, totally abstain from sneering and
ill-natured attacks on other religions and their followers. Could this
be accomplished a greater step would be taken towards the reunion of
Christendom than could be achieved by any number of conferences,
commissions, councils and conv