"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."--John 18:37.

      And as Christ, the supreme personage came into this world for a definite purpose, so comes all life.

G. H. COMBS.

"Nothing walks with aimless feet"--nothing from lowliest cart-horse in city ways to tallest angel in the courts of God. The ship sails toward a port; the chariot rolls toward a goal. A single grain in a swirl of sand unstraining towards an end were plentiful proof of a godless world. Purpose is everywhere, and "towards one fixed far-off, divine event the whole creation moves."

      This purpose grips the individual as well as the all. No man is born but that his work is born with him. The humblest cradle is rocked in the shadow of a divine decree. Worlds have orbits no more fixed than human souls. God's fingers tug at a baby as surely as at a star. "For this came I into the world" is the cry of all that is--trees, rivers, hills, stars, books, civilizations, governments, institutions, naked souls of men. "For this"--not these; for one, not many things--a something definite--apart, all-inclusive, sovereign, a mandate whose shadow never lifts.

      If this be tree of life in the humblest forms, how much the more of life in vaster reaches. The world's great souls are born to a predestined work, and spin in orbits smoothed by divine decree. Luther did the work for which he was born and nailed his thesis to Wittenberg Church door with the hammer of God; John Wesley accomplished the task for which he was sent and flamed through the infidelities of his day with a very torch of heaven; Jean of Arc executed the mission for which she came into the world, faring forth from gentle pastorals to strife of battle days ringed round with the angels of God--saint to-day and saint always, not by the futile ceremonial of a too tardy church, but by the grace of a life that, obedient to heavenly visions, accomplished almost divinely its work. [24]

      This all-pervasiveness of purpose extends to institutions, organizations, world movements, for these streams roll all, if they rightly roll, along the channels digged by the divine purpose.

      Let us look at this great movement whose Centennial we are gathered here to celebrate in the light of this text.

      We, too, may say, "For this came I into the world." For something--a something central, imperial, a something undone and not to be done by others, a something that constitutes at once the justification of our being and the inspiration of our labors--were we born. We came for something. We are either pretentious interlopers or we were sent of God to do a given work. We are either a necessity or a nuisance.

      For what? The answer to this question is a clear limitation of the sermon. We have gathered here to celebrate the Centennial of one of the most remarkable movements of all Christian times. One hundred years ago at this natal place a word was spoken and the word had life, and that life is the life of one and one-quarter million souls. It is fitting that we gather here now and from every quarter of our home land and from over seas. We have "come up to Pittsburg" even as the tribes came up to Jerusalem--come to recount the splendid history of a hundred years, come to do honor to the fathers of our faith, come to lay our flowers on historic graves, come for glimpses of broader and better years to be.

      But from all this I must turn resolutely aside, asking simply, asking earnestly, and answering in what understanding may be mine, the question: What is the mission of the Disciples of Christ, and how may they get it done?

      In these days when our brethren of other communions love this Book as well as we, bowing before it in equal reverence, and when to go no further, our Baptist brethren disclaim alike with us the binding authority of any human deliverance, holding this Word supreme, shall we say that our mission as a people is the exaltation of the Bible? Surely not, for this, though a great, is no longer a distinctive message, and hence no justification of our continuing life.

      Spend no time in belaboring creeds, for with the thoughtful in all the churches--and brain will always win in the end--human creeds as tests of orthodoxy have lost all standing. To be sure, the creeds are yet with us, but only as shadows are, and their voices are no longer heard. On an island of the Nile, hard by the place where tradition places the floating crib of the infant Moses, stands an old Nileometer. It is not used now, and we do not need to be told that even in its service days it did not control the river, but merely gauged its rise and fall. So stand the creeds, no longer used, merely antique registers of old-time thought, and even at their best no more determining the movements of the spirit than did that obsolete register the mystery motions of the Nile.

      Nor in final negative did we come into the world to proclaim the universal Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth! That is a great message. It is the topmost note of human song. It is a fitting climax to our Centennial week that on Saturday night, under the sway of great preachers, we shall ascend the heights of this imperial theme and listen to the music of the skies.

      In this proclamation, the Disciples bore a heroic part. That thrilling cry of the last quarter of a century, "Back to Christ," was not lifted up first from the towers of old Oxford, but by the Campbells and their compeers. "Back to Christ," back to his sovereign person as the center of all religious thought, as the heart of all creeds, as the bond of all brotherhoods, as the inspiration alike of individual endeavor and the social passion--back to Christ as the explanation of the past, the key to the present, the hope of all the unborn days.

      The restoration of the unity of the church to the end that the world may be won to Christ. The aim is threefold:

      First, to point out the shame and sin of disunity.

      Second, to create a hunger for the unity of the people of God. [25]

      Third, to point out a way for the realization of this unity.

      To this threefold task the fathers gave themselves. But though one hundred years have passed away since first they lifted up their protest against the divisions of Christendom, and though that protest has been repeated by those within and without our communion until it has become a well-nigh universal chorus of dissent, I make bold to say that the gravity of the situation is not yet fully recognized nor its awful hurt and blight.

      No indictment can be severe enough, no assailment vigorous enough, no condemnation heavy enough of this, the great hindrance to the conversion of the world.

      The disunion of Christendom is more than economic waste, it is more than social inefficiency, it is more than loss to brotherhood--it is black and damning sin. It has hindered the church in the past, it makes futile the present endeavor, it blocks the way of the to-morrows. Disunity, with its thronging scandals, crucifies the Son of God afresh and puts him to an open shame.

      This disunity would be pure comedy if it were not already tragedy. Think of the city of Pittsburg, for example, with its police and fire protective and educational systems organized along the line of our denominational heterogenities. A Presbyterian policeman on this corner, a Methodist on that, an Episcopal on that; a Democratic fire station here, a Republican there, a Socialist there; an allopathic ward school here, a homeopathic there, an osteopathic there--all working independently, none working together, a huddle of dislocations, a pyramid of inefficiencies! And to complete the picture, think of an apologist for those conditions saying, "Well, variety, you know, is the way of God. We are not all of one mind. We can not be expected to think the same way. We can't all agree on pedagogical rules, nor on the way drunken men should be locked up, nor on how fires should be put out--these rivalries are very wholesome, and, besides, don't you see, we are all working for the same ends!" And yet, this very sort of twaddle is heard in provincial circles in justification of a divided Christendom!

      The temper of the modern mind is expressed in the word consolidation, unification. Evolution was the watchword of the last quarter of a century; consolidation is the watchword of to-day. Evolution said, "Get up;" consolidation says, "Get together"--that you may get up.

      And woe unto the churches if they heed not this message! The spectacle of a little village, with a half-dozen struggling little churches with their unnecessary duplications--six little buildings, six wheezy little organs, six little inefficient choirs, six half-starved preachers--is the saddest sight beneath the stars.

      But the world will not merely pity. "Get together" is its exhortation, and if the churches persist in their scandal of division--if they have not brains enough or goodness enough to "get together"--the world will brush them aside as hindrances and not helpers in its onward march. The question of union is not a question of greater efficiency, it is a question of life.

      This fact bulks so large and portentous that it is being recognized by thoughtful men in all the churches, and the Baptists, Henson and Tupper; the Congregationalists, Hillis and Dawson; the Presbyterians, Van Dyke and Schaff; the Episcopalians, Farrar and Winchester, join in a chorus of condemnation.

      Where, then, if this is true, is our distinctiveness of mission. If, in other churches, the condemnation of divisions among Christians is being heard, what is the special contribution now of the Disciples of Christ?

      It is this: the restoration of that unity. The work that has been done has been largely destructive. The work that awaits us is constructive. It is for us, realizing the purpose for which we came into the world, not merely to swell the chorus of criticism of things as they are, but to help bring on a better day. It is our mission not merely to present a criticism, but a program; to offer not only a condemnation, but a platform. [26] We were sent to translate yearning into accomplishment, and dream of unity into deed. It is our mission to lead the Christian world from the fields of strife into that temple of unity wherein all men are brothers and over all is God.

      But how shall this unity be brought about? This is neither the time nor the place for the discussion in detail the worth of this program, but, in a word, it is this: The turning away from the ecclesiastical traditions of eighteen hundred years and the recovery of the simplicity of the early Christian faith. It is the plain statement by plain people that the church was once united, and that to get back to a real unity you have only to follow the now separated streams of the churches, until you reach that place in time and thought when only one river flowed.

      It is the contention that just as priceless frescoes on old cathedral walls covered over by lime of later days need only the removal of the covering wash that they may look out upon us with their splendid story, so the original church, where all were one in Christ, needs only to be freed from the clouding additions of disputatious years that its primal glory may be revealed. Do our people propose to construct a platform on which a united church may stand? We propose no such foolish thing. We hold that this platform has been already built--built, but covered up--and all that we need to do is to dig down beneath the dogma debris of the centuries until we find it. We construct nothing. We reform nothing. We propose only to restore--to wash the old pictures of their dust and smoke that their beauties may live again.

      Does it mean, then, a recovery of all that which is altogether lost? Happily, no. The fundamental truths of the Christian religion have never been wholly lost, and we ask only that those fundamental truths, the common property of Christendom, be clean stripped of the accidental and the non-essential, and be made the basis for a united church. We hold that Christians of all creeds and phases of thought can unite only on those great truths that are held alike dear by all. We hold that a catholic church can be built only on catholic truths.

      We ask all Christians to unite by wearing a name at once catholic, Scriptural, the name that is the glory and inspiration of all our churches--the name of Christ. We ask all Christians to unite upon a creed bearing also the marks of Scripturalness and catholicity, a creed living, vital, unchanging--the person of Christ. We ask all Christians to unite upon the observances of the ordinances of the church as they are revealed in Scripture and in the catholic recognitions of the churches.

      In a word, we hold that if the churches were to strip themselves of all that is specially distinctive and sectarian, that, so divested, they would have all the marks of the catholic, which is the apostolic, which is the united church. Scripturalness, catholicity, these are the twin fixed stars in whose light we journey as we seek restoration of a united church.

      But the bigger, more imperative question for us who are gathered here to-night is: How may this union be accomplished? First of all, by a clear demonstration of the practicability of union among ourselves. Preaching unity, we must be united. We must bring to the churches not only a program, but an accomplishment. The sorriest, tragicalest thing in all the world is the spectacle of a warring church preaching the gospel of peace. Other communions may divide and subdivide and yet do no violence to their plea, but for the Disciples to divide were public condemnation and shame.

      For it is with the practicability of this union movement that the world is most concerned. Interested observers in all the churches are in sympathy with our unity aim, but distrustful of our program. These are asking plain questions. Are you who preach union united? Is your common bond strong enough to hold together men of different temperaments, of different schools of thought? Being many, do you see with one eye, feel with one heart, labor with one hand? After one hundred years of experimentation, do you find that the tie binds? Ah, does it bind! Thank God, thus far it binds! But eternal vigilance here is the price of [27] our larger success, To keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace must command our supreme efforts. Let any incipient estrangement among us be quickly checked. We are brethren. Resist current classifications as if they were from the devil--as they are. Wear no placards. Let no man among us say, "I am of Cincinnati," "I am of St. Louis," "I am of Nashville," "I am of Chicago," but let every man among us say, "I am of Christ." Shun ecclesiastical markings, labelings, ticketings, collars. Markings are for sheep, labelings for hams, ticketings for railroad passengers, collars for dogs. Be free men; be Christ-men; be brothers.

      In common with all other religious bodies, two schools of thought are represented among us--the conservative, the progressive. And it is well. Each is the necessary complement of the other. Conservatism without the touch of radicalism breeds stagnation. Radicalism without the constraint of conservatism spells anarchy. Two words put into our blood will hold the conservatives and the progressives together--toleration, consideration.

      Let but toleration and consideration do their work of grace in our hearts, and a watching world will be constrained to say, "Behold, how these disciples love one another!"

      We can accomplish our mission only through the grace of selflessness.

      We must be single-purposed. "This one thing I do." If we were sent into the world to restore the unity of the church, we may not turn aside from that work even to holiest enterprises. Even other kinds of good may be for us a sin. Always and everywhere we must remember the one imperial task to which we have been called. Much of vital and Christian work done by other religious bodies we may not even undertake. Let us get this one work clearly before us.

      Ours is not the mission of social reform. Society needs reformation, God knows. Hideous wrongs are to be redressed; cruel inequalities are to be remedied--much is to be done; but not by us. Then, may we not fight the battle of the weak against the strong? We may not--now. Why? Because this battle can be fought, these injustices removed, only by a united church. You can never have a whole sociology without a whole Christendom. The body politic is sick. What ails it? One hundred and twenty-six sects come in to diagnose the disease and prescribe the remedy--only, mark it well, these one hundred and twenty-six doctors do not hold a consultation, but come in singly with their confusing counsels! What would you say to a man who was being experimented upon by one hundred and twenty-six doctors, each with a separate remedy? I think you would tell him to make his will. And yet, exactly this travesty fronts us in the present Christian solutions of social problems!

      Let us understand, then, that this union program is primary, fundamental. A divided church can not reconstruct society; a divided church can not save us from the blight of mammonism; a divided church can not cleanse our cities; a divided church can not solve the problem of poverty. There's just one decent thing a divided church can do; it can die.

      It is not the mission of the scholar or the critic. We have heard much of "criticism" in this Centennial year--too much. The contentions of this sermon on this point are three:

      First, it is none of our business. Criticism is not our task. Important as Biblical criticism is, and I do not underrate its importance, we were not sent into the world to engage in it. Our task is to unite Christians. The one supreme work we are sent to do is to cure the hurts of a divided church. How shall our people "line up" in this matter of criticism? We do not need to "line up" at all. Does one say, "The preacher of the evening is not a critic and knows little of criticism"? Most grave and reverend seignior, you have spoken a true word. He is, as you say, no critic. But hear me. I challenge your right to be primarily a critic, conservative or progressive, whoever you may be. We were sent into the world to restore the unity of the church of God, and until that great consummation no man among us has leave to turn to other [28] tasks. Second, important as these critical problems are, they are not comparable in importance to the supreme work for which we were born. The world could get on with two Isaiahs or a dozen, as for that, but it can't get on with a divided church. Men can be saved, I opine, if they never got a glimpse of the rainbow Bibles that our German brethren offer us for our edification, but the world can never be saved by a divided church. And, finally, here as before, we contend that we shall never have a wholly worthy Biblical interpretation until we have a united church. Men can never think right until they live right, and Christians can never live right until they cease their warfares and become one in Christ the Lord. Brethren, let us have less of "criticism" and more of "unionism" in these days to come.

      Our mission is not to the unchurched at home. No man in this midst believes in evangelism more than I, and yet even the supreme work of winning men to the Lord Christ must not, for one moment, turn us aside from the work to which we have been called. Great as is evangelism, let us bear in mind that our emphasis can not be here, but on the unity of the Lord's people. Why? Because the unification of the churches is a necessary precedent to effective evangelism. A divided church can not evangelize our homeland. It is not evangelizing it. Protestantism is paralyzed by its disunion, and never shall we win the world at our doors until there shall be one church, even as there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God over all.

      Ours is not a mission to the heathen world. If, in this great missionary convention, it is difficult to present this proposition without danger of misunderstanding, the fault is with the conditions and not the speaker. Do we not, one and all, believe in the evangelization of the heathen world? Yes, it is because we believe in it so tremendously that we say this word. For we know that these nations beyond the seas can never be evangelized by a divided church. We have heard the Master's prayer, "Father, may they all be one, as thou art in me, and I in thee, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me," and we know that only through a united church can the world be won. "First things first." And the first is unity--unity for evangelization; the unification of the church for the conversion of the world.

      What, then, is our mission? It has been already oft repeated--the unification of the churches of our Lord. Now, if our mission is to unite Christians, our message must be to Christians. If we were sent into the world with a message to Christians in all the communions of earth, we must somehow deliver that message. But are we? Before almighty God, yes or no? Are we reaching the ear and heart of Christendom? Are we going as flaming messengers to the churches around us, beseeching them in Christ's name to be one? Here in this great Centennial Convention is the place for great confessions. We are not accomplishing, as we ought, our sacred mission. And here, with these faces of our fathers looking down upon us, let us reconsecrate ourselves to our proper work. For these sturdy pioneers delivered their message. They spoke to the churches. From every platform, whether city church or woodland temple, they preached to Christians of all communions, beseeching them to be one. We must follow them. Their mission is our mission. We must address the churches of our day just as Mr. Campbell addressed the churches of his day. Convincing them of our absolute disinterestedness, of our great concern, not for the building up of another denomination, but for the union of all believers in Christ. We must find our way into their pulpits, into their prayer-meetings, their revivals, their conventions, with the one cry on our lips and in our hearts, "Brethren, we entreat you that there may be no divisions among you." We count "our plea" familiar. Familiar? Yes--to us, but strange as tongue of Araby to the Christian world at large. It is ours to make it known, to see to it that every man who holds in his heart the face of Christ, from humblest sexton of [29] dissenting chapel to highest dignitary in historic church, English, Greek and Roman, shall have heard our story.

      This is a summons to a warfare and not a battle. Victory will not come on the morrow. The consummation may be yet afar, but this we can do: we can give ourselves in passionate abandon to this notable mission. We can do our very all, and if the triumph come not in our day, we can surrender our task in confidence to those who come after, knowing that soon or late the day will come, and singing even while we die:

      Lastly, we may accomplish our mission through supreme endeavor in the strength of a triumphing faith.

      You say it is a stupendous task. Be it so. It is the big, splendid task that makes the sovereign appeal. It is the high mountain, and not the hill, that challenges the climber. If big things are to be done, let us attempt them in big ways. The day of small things is past. This is a great brotherhood, and it can do great things if it will.

      Let us face the humiliating truth that we are not living up to our opportunity. We are not reaching, in any large and commanding way, the religious world. We preach sermons, in the main, to "our people;" we publish papers for "our people;" we write books for "our people;" but in no worthiness of effort are we making "our plea" known to the world at large. It is safe to say that the fantastic doctrines of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy have come to a greater publicity in two decades than has this noble plea cherished for a hundred years. That just used phrase, "our plea," takes on a tinge of irony. It seems that we want to keep it "ours," and not suffer it to get far from home.

      We are lacking in a comprehensive, intelligently directed propaganda. We are not organized for the supreme work we are called to do. Societies we have everywhere, thick sown as leaves of Vallombrosa, but among them all, from the big Brotherhood to the little Busy Bees, there is not a hint of an organization for our real work.

      It is well, indeed, that we have gathered here to freshly conceive our work. This is both the place and the hour for the launching of a great union propaganda that shall be worthy of the cause we celebrate.

      We talk about the great "questions" of this Convention. There is but one question: How to deliver our message; how to make it known in a broad, compelling way to the ends of the earth. "Christian Union" to the front! If we have a message to the religious world, let the brain and heart of this great Convention bring forward a clean-cut, definite program of endeavor, so that it may be done. Let us go forward in that work, and let us go in the might of faith.

      There has never been a time since worlds began when any people should have greater confidence in their message than we this hour. How much easier should this faith be to us than to the fathers! They spoke in the strength of hope; we, in the might of accomplishment. To them Christian union was an untried program; to us it is a tried product; they were prophets of unity; we are its historians; they were dubbed dreamers; we have seen the dream pass into a deed. How dare we doubt our message?

      Then, too Our fathers spoke as those born out of due time; they preached unity to an age that was not seeking unity. They declared division a sin, when Christendom held it a grace. They were the voices of unfelt aspirations, the prophets of unborn days. What a change! Our fathers preached to stone walls; we, to warm hearts. They rowed against, but we row with, the tide. They preached to men unfriendly; we, to an age saturated with the sentiment of union and eagerly asking the way. If ever, then, there was a time that made for faith, it is now.

      Men and brethren, let us gird up our rains for fresh and larger endeavors. Let this Centennial mark the hour of [30] the renaissance of a supreme faith in the sanity and practicability. of our union plea. And in the inspiration of that faith, let every one of our million and a quarter souls go forward.

      My brothers, I believe in the fellowship of all souls, and repeat unwaveringly, "I believe in the communion of saints"--all saints, whether in heaven or on earth. This fellowship can not be broken by death.

      And those who have gone before are yet with us. The fathers, they are with us; with us not merely in pictured face and honored memory and kindling inspiration, but with us in very spirit presence. They are here. Think not that they sleep beneath the grassy mounds, nor rest uncaring in some far-off heaven; they are here. Thomas Campbell? Here. Alexander Campbell? Here. W. K. Pendleton? Here. Barton W. Stone? Here. Walter Scott? Here. Jacob Creath, Aylett Raines, Isaac Errett, Robert Milligan? Here--all here. Their unseen hands are upon our heads in blessing; they hearten us with their words: "O church of the living God, go forward. The Lord has sent you. It is not a fruitless fight, Your labors are not in vain. Your days are better, brighter, than the days we knew. It is coming, that great day, when all God's people shall be one. Hasten its coming. Keep heart of faith and be not dismayed. What shall be our answer? "Fathers of our Israel, we will heed your message. And here in your sacred presence we honor you, not only with the tribute of tears, but by consecrating ourselves afresh to the work for which you even laid down your lives." Are our fathers with us and saints and martyrs of all the ages? There is another. Across the chasmed centuries comes the word, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the ages." He is with us! Oh, Master! Master! Look! His face is sad. Listen! His voice is filled with the anguish of a breaking heart. "My brothers, it has been long, long since I died for you and all mankind, but many have not heard my story, my gospel has not yet been preached to every creature. My people are divided and can not carry everywhere my word. Bid them be one. Go, go to them in passion and tears and loving words, beseeching them that they be united, that the world may know that the Father hath sent me. And as you go with my word, go in my Spirit, wearing not only my name, but living my life." What shall we answer him? "O Master, we will not fail thee."

      Amen. [31]

[CCR 24-31]