sufficiently flexible to be adaptable to all needs.  We look for an organization of the Church of Christ that shall exclude no one who shares His Spirit, and that shall provide an outlet for every gift the Spirit bestows, that shall bind all followers of Christ together in effort for the one purpose—­the Kingdom of God—­enabling them to feel their corporate oneness, and that shall give them liberty to think, to worship, to labor, as they are led by the Spirit of God.

Meanwhile there are some immediate personal obligations which rest upon us.  We cannot be factors in the organized Church of Christ, save as we are members of one of the existing churches.  A Christian should enroll himself either in that communion in which he was born and to which he owes his spiritual vitality, or else in that with which he finds he can work most helpfully.  A Christian who is not a Church member is like a citizen who is not a voter—­he is shirking his responsibility.

We must free our minds from prejudice against those whose ways of stating their beliefs, whose modes of worship, whose methods of working, differ from our own.  We are not to argue with them which of us is nearer the customs of the New Testament; that is not to the point.  Wherever we see the Spirit of Christ, there we are to recognize fellow churchmen in the one Church of God.  We do not wish uniformity, but variety in unity; for only a Church with a most varied ministry can bring the life of God to the endlessly diverse temperaments of men and women.  We are not seeking for the maximum common denominator, and insisting that every communion shall give up all its distinctive doctrines, ritual, customs and activities.  We do not want any communion to be “unclothed,” but “clothed upon,” that what is partial may be swallowed up of fuller life.  Dogmatists, be they radicals or conservatives, who insist on a particular interpretation of Christianity, ecclesiastics who arrogantly consider their “orders” superior to those of other servants of Christ as spiritually gifted and as publicly accredited, sectarians so satisfied with the life of their particular segment of the Church that they do not covet a wider enriching fellowship, and churchmen whose conception of the task of the Church is so petty that they fail to feel the imperative necessity of articulating all its forces in one harmoniously functioning organization, are the chief postponers of the effective unity of the Body of Christ.

We have to consider the particular communion to which we ourselves belong, and ask whether there are any barriers in it that exclude from its membership or from its working force those who possess the Spirit of Christ, and so are divinely called into the Church and divinely endowed for service.  We must make our own communion as inclusive as we believe the Church to be, or we are not attempting to organize the Church of Christ, but to create some exclusive club or sect of Christians of a particular variety.