There is hope then for closer fellowship within the Church, because the problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of her members.  A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the Christian tradition.  It would be idle to pretend that the process has reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity.  No one indeed believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover—­not even those who say they do.  The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential.  But if I may venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles’ creed will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity.  The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be regarded as indispensable.  If I may attempt to forecast, I would say that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the Apostles’ Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of Jesus.  The choice will lie between a conception of God for which the story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance.  This is not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian.  The ultimate parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man’s faith in God is Christ-centred or not.  The significant cleavage of the future will come between those who believe that Christianity—­the belief in the Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ—­is the final religion, and those who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up in some still broader faith in God for which other revelations, through nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries ago.  But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and reveal fellowship in fundamentals where men had previously supposed themselves to be hopelessly divided.

It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias rather than critical judgement.  Yet it is perhaps permissible to point out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural development of the Quaker respect for that of God in every man.  It represents the longing for a religious fellowship which does not force opinion