ns, can approach that
which has its seat at Rome, in the world-wideness of its presence, or
demand with so bold a challenge,

Quae regio in terris non nostri plena laboris?

The representative assembly of any other body of Christians, however
widely ramified, must seem insignificant when contrasted with the real
ecumenicity of the Vatican Council. But it has not been useless for the
larger sects of Protestantism to arrange their international assemblies,
if it were for nothing more than this, that such widening of the circle
of practical fellowship may have the effect to disclose to each sect a
larger Christendom outside to which their fellowship must sooner or
later be made to reach.

The first of these international sectarian councils was that commonly
spoken of as "the Pan-Anglican Synod," of Protestant Episcopal bishops
gathered at Lambeth by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in
1867 and thrice since. The example was bettered by the Presbyterians,
who in 1876 organized for permanence their "Pam-Presbyterian Alliance,"
or "Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the world holding
the Presbyterian System." The first of the triennial general councils
of this Alliance was held at Edinburgh in 1877, "representing more
than forty-nine separate churches scattered through twenty-five
different countries, and consisting of more than twenty thousand
congregations."[413:1] The second council was held at Philadelphia, and
the third at Belfast. The idea was promptly seized by the Methodists. At
the instance of the General Conference of the United States, a
Pam-Methodist Council was held in London in 1881,--"the first Ecumenical
Methodist Conference,"--consisting of four hundred delegates,
representing twenty-eight branches of Methodism, ten in the eastern
hemisphere and eighteen in the western, including six millions of
communicants and about twenty millions of people.[413:2] Ten years
later, in 1891, a second "Methodist Ecumenical Conference" was held at
Washington.

Interesting and useful as this international organization of sects is
capable of being made, it would be a mistake to look upon it as marking
a stage in the progress toward a manifest general unity of the church.
The tendency of it is, on the whole, in the opposite direction.

III. If the organization of "ecumenical" sects has little tendency
toward the visible communion of saints in the American church, not much
more is to be hoped from me