“I do say, as one of the Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church now, and in reference to what fell from the Primus, that I most heartily concur in what he said, and I cannot but feel that, without the slightest breach of the great fundamental principles of the Church of Christ, there are many points on which we may be at one with Christians who are not part of our organic body.

“I believe the proposal made by the Primus would have the effect of drawing them nearer to us, and be a step forward to that consummation which we all desire, and which our blessed Lord prayed—­with his last breath—­’That we may all be one.’” (Great applause.)

That two honoured Fathers of our Church, our Primus and my own Bishop, should have made use of such terms, and that their views should have been received by such an audience with so much applause, I could have offered a grateful acknowledgment upon my knees.

But after all, perhaps, it may be said this is an utopian idea, which, in the present state of religious feelings and ecclesiastical differences, never can be realised.  It were a sufficient answer to the charge of utopianism brought against such a proposal, to plead that it was no more than what was sanctioned by the teaching of God’s word.  In this case it does not seem to go beyond the requirements of holy Scripture as set forth in St. Paul’s description of charity, and in other passages which clearly enjoin Christians to act towards each other in love, and to cultivate, so far as they can, a spirit of mutual forbearance and of joint action in the sacred cause of preaching the truth as it is in Jesus.  I cannot believe that, were St. Paul on earth, he would sanction the present state of jealous separation amongst Christians.  Take such separation in connection with the beautiful sentiment, which we read in Phil. i. 18:—­“What then? notwithstanding every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.”

The determination to exclude preaching that is not strictly according to our own forms seems to me quite inconsistent with the general teaching of Scripture, more particularly with this apostolic declaration.  But I would bring this question to a practical issue, and we shall find enough in our own experience to confirm the view I have taken, and to sanction the arrangement I propose.  To bring forward co-operation in the great and vitally important work of preaching God’s word, which has been already effected between persons holding on some points opinions different from each other, take first the case of revision of the English translation of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, as it has been resolved upon by the authorities of the great Anglican Communion.  They have had no difficulty in finding Nonconformist scholars and divines whose fitness to be associated with Anglican Churchmen in the great work of arranging and correcting