Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship.  Considering first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a revival of the hope of reunion.  We may further claim that certain advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian than before.  Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith.  It has been suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and through rationalism.  Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of repression.  I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the argument, ’You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to persecute heretics or fight Protestants,’ nor would I underestimate the influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by few, contributed to the triumph of the principle.  For the Christian, the duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels.  Some of the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans.  Nor is it a question of a particular incident.  A deep respect for individuality is found to lie at the centre of the gospel.  For the Christian, the attitude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to every man’s conscience, has become more and more clearly the indispensable qualification of the ambassador for Christ.  As the acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first to intensify division.  It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of Rome.  But in the long run, this development of thought must make for better understanding and wider fellowship.

Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed.  The epistle to the Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the Reformation.  It is clear that the present position of the Church, in which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not reflect and envisage the ideal that ‘they all may be one’.  The unity of the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its testimony.  The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely felt.  Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the healing of the nations.