however tempted to
assert for itself exclusive or superior rights, is compelled to look
about itself and find itself overwhelmingly outnumbered and outdone by a
divided communion--and yet a communion--of those whom Christ "is not
ashamed to call his brethren"; and just in proportion as it has the
spirit of Christ, it is constrained in its heart to treat them as
brethren and to feel toward them as brethren. Its protest against what
it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most
unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward
fellow-Christians. Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler
from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social
life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman
Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common
charitable aims, than between Catholics and Protestants in France or
Germany, or between Anglicans and nonconformists in England."[405:1]

* * * * *

There are many indications, in the recent history of the American
church, pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true
unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual,
expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply
competing and often antagonist sects. Instead of easy-going and playful
felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total
effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on
"anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the
acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American
Christendom is not right, but wrong. Whose is the wrong need not be
decided; certainly it does not wholly belong to the men of this
generation or of this country; we are heirs of the schisms of other
lands and ages, and have added to them schisms of our own making. The
matter begins to be taken soberly and seriously. The tender entreaty of
the Apostle Paul not to suffer ourselves to be split up into
sects[405:2] begins to get a hearing in the conscience. The _nisus_
toward a more manifest union among Christian believers has long been
growing more and more distinctly visible, and is at the present day one
of the most conspicuous signs of the times.

Already in the early history we have observed a tendency toward the
healing, in America, of differences imported from over sea. Such was the
commingling of Separatist and Pur