It is thirteen years (he writes) since I first spoke out in the form of a pamphlet. No man stood with me. Hard things were said of me. I believed it to be the will of the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, that there should be union of His Church in Scotland, and primarily that its two great Churches should be one. I have never for a single moment doubted that His will would be fulfilled, or that it was the duty of these Churches to set themselves, under His guidance, with resolute purpose to work out its fulfilment.
Observe his "primarily": he quite recognises (I have his authority for saying so) the further obligation. And no wonder: he is clear as to the one great and supreme motive that should inspire all efforts for Church Reunion—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the obedience of faith which the true confession of His Deity involves.
The will of the Lord in regard to the visible unity of His whole Church is plain: "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must lead; and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd." No doubt there is a difference between a fold (αὑλἡ) and a flock (ποἱμνη), between the racial unity of the Jewish Dispensation and the Catholic and international character impressed from the beginning on the Christian Church. But a flock is as visible as a fold is. We can see the one moving along the road under the shepherd's guidance just as distinctly as we see the other gleaming white on the hillside, or raising its turf-capped walls above the level of the moor. We can see, of course, if the walls of a fold are broken down; but we can see also whether a flock is united, whether it is moving forward as one mass, or is broken up and scattered. Such separations might be well enough if the different little companies were all going quietly on in one way; though even then their breaking up would argue on the one hand a portentous failure in that recognition of the shepherd's voice and the obedience to him which is due to his loving care, and on the other hand a strange lack of that gregariousness which is an instinct in the healthy sheep. But what if the sheep are seen running hither and thither in different directions: if they are found labouring to explain the inadvisability—nay, the impossibility—of their ever coming into line; if we see them instead crossing each other's path, starting from each other, jostling and butting one another, continually getting into situations provocative of fights and injuries?
Is this the kind of picture which the Lord Jesus has drawn of His Flock, His Church as He wishes, and intends, that it should be: is this what He promises that it shall be?
Christ made His Church one at the beginning: the rulers He set over it "were all with one accord in one place"; "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul." And when the Gentiles had been brought in, what care did the Apostles take lest the new departure should cause a separation along a line made obsolete by the Cross of Christ; and with what adoring admiration does St Paul gaze at the delightful spectacle of Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ Jesus—"where," he cries, "there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all."
In matters of rank and race and colour all our denominations retain this Apostolic Catholicity. How inconsistent to maintain it there, and repudiate it when we come to such differences as mostly separate us! These are differences far more of temper than of creed, or even of worship or government. We say, sometimes, that we are "one in spirit": not so; it is just in spirit that we have been divided. In creed and organisation both, and in temper as well, the Church of Apostolic times was visibly one. "See how these Christians love one another" was the comment of the heathen onlooker. This state of things continued for a long time. Gibbon enumerates the Church's "unity and discipline," which go together, as among the "secondary causes" of that wonderful spread of the Gospel in the first three centuries.
The revived, broadened, and more candid study, alike of the New Testament and of Church History throughout its entire course, is one of the ways in which the Good Shepherd has been leading us to see alike the disobedience of our divisions, and the small foundation there is for many of the points over which we have been fighting.
Happily too, we do not now need to argue in favour of visible and organic unity. "The once popular apologies for separation which asserted the sufficiency of 'spiritual' union, and the stimulating virtues of rivalry and competition, have become obsolete."
More happily still, we have learned practically to appreciate the difference between our Saviour's gentle I must lead (δεἱ με ἁγαγεἱν) and our forefathers' various attempts to produce "uniformity" by driving. The reproach of that sinful blunder is one that none of our greater Churches—Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Puritan—can cast in another's teeth. Each of us committed it in our day of triumph. "What fruit had we then in those things whereof we are now ashamed?" The memory—one-sided, and carefully cultivated—of what each suffered in its turn of adversity has hitherto been a potent agency for keeping us apart. To-day those memories are fading. I was much struck by a remark I heard last spring from the Bishop of Southwark, that one reason why we are more ready nowadays to contemplate reunion is just that we belong to a generation to whom those miserable doings are far-off things outside alike our experience and our expectation.
In other ways also we discern leadings of Our Saviour to the same end.