is perhaps the saddest
picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals
off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient
refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of
the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such
publications.

No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall
never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by
saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must
be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know
that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable,"
But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth,
to hold it in the fear and love of God.

So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of
brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to
discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to
point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the
meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a
spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the
Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the
Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in
common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the
life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept
away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and
women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in
Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly
distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with
the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew
that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the
distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It
mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the
slaves