Premature and impracticable efforts should indeed be avoided. The deeply rooted differences of centuries are not to be eradicated in a day. We must feel our way along with caution and wisdom. To attempt too much at first would be to accomplish nothing. Work abroad is necessarily a projection of the work at home and it will be more or less hampered by our American divisions. A prominent clergyman told me that he doubted the wisdom of a union of the Asiatic churches as he feared that such a union would weaken the sense of responsibility of the home churches. He thought that a denomination in America would take a deeper interest in a comparatively small native church wholly dependent upon it than it would in an indeterminate part of a larger church. Must the unity of the foreign church be sacrificed to the divisions of the home church? Perhaps there is some ground for anticipating such objections from home. But if they are found to exist, we should not cease seeking union in Asia, but begin preaching juster views in America.
I must not be understood as depreciating the historic differences of Christendom. I am aware that each of the great religious bodies stands for some cardinal principle that is not emphasized to the same degree by others. The freedom of any given number of believers to witness to a specific truth should not be and need not be limited by union. The contention here is that the differences of the West should not be forced upon the East but that the churches of Asia should be given a fair chance to develop a unity large enough to comprehend these various forms. If they must be divided, let them separate later along their own lines of cleavage, not on lines extended from western nations. In one place, I met a swarthy Asiatic who knew just enough English to be able to tell me that he was a Scotch Presbyterian. Are we then to have a Scotch Presbyterian Church in Asia, and a Canadian Presbyterian Church, and an Australian Presbyterian Church? Is the American Civil War forever to divide communities of Chinese believers into American Northern Presbyterians and American Southern Presbyterians? Why should we force our unhappy quarrel of a generation ago upon them? The American Presbyterian Board has truly declared that ``the object of the foreign missionary enterprise is not to perpetuate on the mission field the denominational distinctions of Christendom but to build up on Scriptural lines and according to Scriptural principles and methods the Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ.'' It has advised all its missions that ``we encourage as far as practicable the formation of union churches in which the results of the mission work of all allied evangelical churches should be gathered, and that they (the missions) observe everywhere the most generous principles of missionary comity.'' The specific approval of this declaration, by the General Assembly of 1900, makes this the authoritative policy of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
In harmony with this general position, several significant efforts towards union are being made. The first movements, naturally, are towards a union of communions that are substantially alike in polity and doctrine. Already all the Presbyterian and Reformed Boards operating in Japan, Korea, Mexico and India have joined in the support of a united native church in those lands, and similar movements are in progress in other lands and in several churches, notably the Protestant Episcopal and the Methodist Episcopal. In China, the representatives of the eight Presbyterian denominations of Europe and America have met in loving conference and planned to unite all the native Christians connected with their respective missions into one magnificent and commanding Church.
And now unions of wholly different denominations are being discussed. The American Board missionaries intimated to the Presbyterian Mission in 1901 that there might be ``no inherent difficulty in uniting the membership of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches in Chih-li in one common body.'' A similar question is being informally discussed by the American Presbyterian missionaries and those of the English Baptist Mission in Shantung. The fellowship between the two bodies there, as between Presbyterians and Congregationalists in Chih-li, is close.
The local difficulties do not appear to be serious. An English Baptist missionary frankly stated in an open conference of missionaries of various boards in Chefoo, that his mission, with the full knowledge of the home society, took the position that the Chinese Christians are not yet fit for congregational government, being, as a rule, comparatively ignorant farmers just out of heathenism; that it had been found necessary to select the best men in a local church and give them powers which, for all practical purposes, constituted them a session, and that the native church as a whole was being more and more directed by a body consisting of representatives from such sessions. An American Board missionary told me substantially the same thing regarding the churches of his mission. We should not infer too much from such admissions. Both Baptists and Congregationalists are loyally attached to their independent policy. Both referred, of course, to the temporary adaptions necessary in the present stage of mission work. As for Presbyterians, their Board's Committee on Policy and Methods declared, March 6, 1899:—
``It is inexpedient to give formal organization to churches and Presbyteries after American models unless there is manifest need therefor, and such forms are shown to be best adapted to the people and circumstances. In general, the ends of the work will be best attained by simple and flexible organizations adapted to the characteristic and real needs of the people and designed to develop and utilize spiritual power rather than merely or primarily to secure proper ecclesiastical procedure.''
As a matter of fact, neither the representative nor the independent forms of church government are yet in unmodified operation on any mission fields, except perhaps in Japan, for the simple reason that the typical foreign missionary has thus far necessarily exercised the functions of a superintendent or bishop of the native churches. Undoubtedly, however, the Asiatic churches are being educated to expect self-government as soon as they are competent to exercise it.
Doctrinal differences may present greater difficulties. And yet there is a remarkable unanimity of teaching among the missionaries of the various denominations in China. However widely they may differ among themselves, nearly all agree in preaching to the Chinese the great central truths of Christianity so that most of the native Christians know little of the sectarian distinctions that are so well-understood in America. Such differences as are necessary in China might be provided for by recognizing the liberty of the local church and the individual believer to hold whichever phase of the truth might be preferred. The China Inland Mission has shown that this plan is feasible. It is composed of missionaries of all Protestant denominations, but they work in harmony and build up a Chinese church by recognizing the right of brethren to differ in the same organization.
Doubtless isolated cases of embarrassment would occur, but they would be insignificant in comparison with the embarrassments inherent in sectarian divisions. Denominational uniformity is bought at bitter cost when it separates Christians into rival camps. Unity in essentials and liberty in non-essentials are far better than a slavery to non-essentials which destroys that oneness of believers for which our Lord prayed. In the presence of a vast heathen population, let Christians at least remember that their points of disagreement are less vital than their points of agreement, that Christianity should, as far as possible, present a solid front, and let them devoutly join the Conference of Protestant missionaries in Japan in the ringing proclamation:—``That all those who are one with Christ by faith are one body, and that all who love the Lord Jesus and His Church in sincerity and truth should pray and labour for the full realization of such a corporate oneness as the Master Himself prayed for in the night in which He was betrayed.''
It is true that an advanced position on comity sometimes operates to the disadvantage of the denomination that espouses it. But let us be true to our ideals even if some whom we might have reached do go to heaven by another route. Other churches are preaching the gospel and those who accept it at their hands will be saved. We are in Asia to preach Christ, to preach Him as we understand Him, but if any one else insists on preaching Him in a given place and will do so with equal fidelity to His divinity and atone- ment, let us cooperate with them, or federate with them, or combine with them, or give up the field to them, as the circumstances may require. The problem before us is not simply where we can do good, but where we can do the most good, how use to the best advantage the limited resources at our command. Givers at home have a right to demand this. Many of their gifts involve self-sacrifice, and they should be used where a real need exists. ``There remains yet very much land to be possessed.'' I have seen enough of it to burden my heart as long as I live, toiling, sorrowing, sin-laden multitudes, who might be better Christians than we are if they had our chance, but who are scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. And shall we multiply missionaries in places already occupied and dispute as to who shall preach in a given fields when these millions are dying without the gospel?