WHILE the religious world is busily devising and discussing plans for securing Christian unity, there is a … Christian unity in the world to which all are led who receive and love the truth of God. The Apostle Paul has written that in Jesus Christ—who is the embodiment of divine truth—there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor civilized, male nor female. All earthly distinctions of race, class, or condition, are broken down, and nothing is left but “a man in Christ Jesus.” And this makes its believers one.
This unity, we repeat, exists to-day, as it has since existed since the day when it was first exemplified in the Christian church. Let a man who holds the Christian faith—the glorious truth which has brought to him the salvation of God—meet with others of “like precious faith,” and whether it be an African, a Turk, a Russian, or one of any other race or class, there is a greeting like that between old friends, though they may never have seen each other before. They are acquainted though they have never met, and all difference of circumstances between them is ignored and lost in the significance of their one common and mighty circumstance of having been created new in Christ Jesus.
This mighty truth fills all the horizon of vision in the Christian life, and leaves no room for denominational divisions. In Christ, there is neither Methodist nor Presbyterian, Catholic nor Protestant; but the old self with all its connections and titles is gone, and only Christ is left.
Let people of all sects find the truth, and they will find Christian unity. They will find the truth when they find Christ, for he is “the way, the truth, and the life.” In the same prayer in which the Saviour prayed for the unity of his followers, he said, “Sanctify them through thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” By the study of the Word, and faith in it, is Christian unity to be realized.
This is not the way in which this unity is being sought by the churches. It is being sought through a confederacy; not through love, but through force; and the result will be not Christian unity, but a union which will bring persecution to those who put their trust in the Lord of hosts alone.