For centuries it had stood, strong and stately, the shrine where monarchs knelt to receive their crown, and rich and poor alike bowed to worship their God. It was the pride of England's faith--Westminster Abbey. Then came World War II, and the pitiless hail of German bombs. One came crashing through the Abbey's roof and left a livid scar across its beauty-still unhealed when on Whit Sunday, 1941, a great gathering crowded into the Abbey's nave for a service in remembrance of the first Christian Pentecost.

      One worshipper looked around her at representatives of many different races and colors; and then, suddenly sensing a stronger light than that which stole through stained glass windows, she looked up. There, through the gaping hole, she saw the sun sweep from behind a cloud; she felt a sudden rush of wind, and with the wind two birds darted in, hovering in the sunlit glory of the upper air. Watching, she thrilled to the thought of what Pentecost must have meant.

      There are those who say that something like this has happened to the Church of our century--that at long last something has broken through and let in the glory and Spirit of God, lighting the darkened ways of a Church where now, truly, those of every race and tongue can

worship together. This, they say, is the Church Resurgent, rediscovering its essential unity.

      But someone else says, "This talk of the Church Resurgent makes me sick. Resurgent! Why, it's no more resurgent than the old chap who lives down the road. He has been a strong man in his time; knew what he wanted, held fast to his convictions. Then he fell ill, and for a long time the old man hardly moved, apart from one or two good days when something of the old life came back to him. Now he is on his feet again, but something has happened to his mind. It's pathetic to watch him, for he has gone back to childhood and begun to play with blocks. He got the idea from the sick old chap next door--Mr. World is his name. Whenever he isn't playing with explosives and almost blowing himself up, the poor mad fellow builds with blocks. He built quite an imposing structure once, and called it the League of Nations. It was knocked down, so he tried again; built another, and called it United Nations. It doesn't look over-safe, either. But doddering Mr. Church likes the idea--he has built his blocks into a World Council of Churches, and one or two other such things. Yet he lives in dread that one day another of his neighbors, young Joe Communist, will come rushing through the front door and knock the lot over. And he will one day--mark my words. It's nonsense to talk of the Church Resurgent. Why doesn't it get on with its real job and stop fooling around with a madman's dream? It will never be more united than it is right now."

      Is that true? Are those who work towards unity only the pathetic dupes of a dream? Or is it true, on the other hand, that something has happened, and is happening, in our time which is the work of the Spirit of God in the Church?

      Let it be said at once that if we are the dupes of a dream we are in excellent company.

We are with the Son of God himself, praying, "That they all may be one" (Jn. 17:21); we are with the apostle to the Gentiles, looking forward to the time when "we all realise our common unity through faith in the Son of God, and fuller knowledge of him" (Eph. 4:13--Knox); we are in the company of a missionary like William Carey, dreaming a century before it really happened of missionaries of the world coming together in conference; we hear again the ringing words of Thomas Campbell, "The Church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one."

      Yes, excellent company--and a vaster company than men sometimes realise; for there has not been one century in all the Church's history when men have not dreamed of union, the one Body of Christ. But these were not dreamers only they were men who did things. They grappled with facts. And the

for union. They always have-from the moment the Church began to divide. Paul cried out in protest when he saw the first rents in the robe of Christ. "Be strong," he urged. "Don't weaken yourselves. Look at the forces against you. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places." The forces arraigned against you demand a Church that is truly one.

      The grim facts of history prove him right. "We are up against the unseen power that rules this dark world," and it is criminal folly to go on facing it with a splintered Church.

      In 1951, Daniel Niles, brilliant young Methodist leader in Ceylon, cried out, "How quickly ecclesiastical barriers tended to disappear during the time when enemy occupation during the war involved

all in common risks, and evoked from all a mutual concern! How is it that we so rarely remember that the whole world is under enemy occupation? Is it because we have become reconciled to the power of Satan?" Words like these recall the challenge William Booth flung back at those who criticised him for sending gentle Salvation Army lassies into some of London's worst vice spots. "Don't you know there's a war on?" he thundered.

      Dare any of us forget that to-day? We have known the recurring agony of wars between nations, and those flaunting evils which precipitate wars, and keep on with their foul work, even when guns are silenced. Racial hatreds, color prejudice, social and economic strife, materialism, resurgent nationalism, aggressive communism, those social evils which are poisoning the life of every nation-all these, and more, represent a force which should be faced by the Church at its strongest.

      Look at Asia, now knocking so urgently at our own front door. Six new nations in South-East Asia, born in these past ten to twelve years, pose urgent problems for the Church. One of the questions which must hammer at our conscience is whether the Church will again supinely let happen in this strategic area what happened earlier in Japan. A century ago American gunboats in her harbors made Japan realise she had slumbered too long in the modern world. She woke up sharply, and sent her investigators into the Western world to see what lay behind its might. They marvelled at armaments, and all the miracles of science and industry, and said, "All this we must have for ourselves." They looked at the divided Church, saw how little it really counted--and ignored it. And when their chosen course led them to a war which almost brought them bursting into our own land, it

was the Church's crowning shame that it was the Japanese war lords who literally forced the Japanese Church to unite. Clearly, a divided Church was no use to the Government. How much more use is it to the Lord of the Church himself?

      Facts like these come barking at the heels of the Church to-day. "Get moving!" they clamor. "You may not have much time. Why go into the conflict weaker than you need be? Be strong in the Lord. Be one in the Lord!"

      But even more imperative than the thrust of the world's forces is the Church's own sense of failure in her mission. At last, in our time, there has come almost universal admission that division is sin. That, of course, was not admitted 150 years ago when Thomas Campbell made his historic protest against division. Nor was it generally admitted even less than a century ago, when the great Congregationalist preacher, Dr. R. W. Dale, looking at wasteful competitive denominationalism in one English summer resort, exploded to a friend, "I could swear when I think of it. It exists far too strong to be suppressed." The difference between Campbell and Dale is that Campbell didn't just swear--though doubtless he felt like it many a time; he didn't throw up his arms and gloomily admit that denominationalism was "too strong to be suppressed." He tackled it with a plan and a plea, which, far from being out-moded, have increasing significance for our own time. The work of men like Campbell is still bearing fruit. All round the world churchmen are humbly confessing, "Our division is sin." There are still strong flutterings in some denominational dovecotes. The cause is not yet fully won--but almost, because the Church knows it isn't doing its full job.

      World-wide bodies have been born, like the World's Student Christian Federation, with its gallant motto, "The Evangelisation of the World

in this Generation." That goal wasn't achieved. It needed a united Church on the job. During World War II, Dr. Stanley Jones, well-known as a leader of evangelism in many lands, at last admitted frustration in his work until something was done about Church union. "Without it I'm failing, we're all failing," was his conviction. He spent three years in the United States, building an organisation of churchmen, and then in 1947 launched his crusade for Church union. "We can have union in five or ten years," he declared, "if we really want it."

      It was in facing situations together that men rediscovered the meaning of fellowship. They found that they belonged together more than they had ever realised. It was no easy discovery. We have been celebrating this year the Triple Jubilee of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Do you realise that the Society was fifty-five years old before it was possible to have prayer in its annual meetings? A hundred years ago it was thought a revolutionary thing for Christians of various communions to pray together-almost as revolutionary as it still is for some Christians to think they can break bread together at the Lord's Table.

      Nevertheless, Christian men-and notably missionaries-began to experiment in tackling certain tasks. There were hesitations and doubts; there was something of what the Archbishop of Canterbury confessed as recently as 1948, in a candid aside: "We do not like each other very much, but we are very much alike." Thomas Campbell had declared in his Declaration and Address in 1809, "Till you associate, consult and

advise together, and in a friendly and a Christian manner explore the subject, nothing can be done." He was right. Once fellow-Christians began to associate, things really began to happen. It is hard to realise how that discovery startled the churchmen of a century or so ago. The secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society turned down Carey's idea of a world gathering of missionaries because he thought that "in a meeting of all denominations there would be no unity, without which we had better stay at home."

      But, agreeably startled, they kept on working together, making fresh discoveries of what the New Testament meant when it spoke of "the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." There were Bible Societies; missionary conferences; the great Evangelical Alliance, which stimulated many Christian activities without seriously tackling the Churches' disunity; world youth movements, like the Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A., and the Students' Federation. Then, in 1910, came the really significant step forward--the great Edinburgh Conference composed, for the first time, of official delegates from missionary societies, and declaring that, "the aim of all missionary work is to plant in each non-Christian nation one undivided Church." For the first time, a Continuation Committee was appointed, and Dr. Mott, the Chairman, said exultantly, "The end of the Conference is the beginning of the conquest." The International Missionary Council was born, and other missionary conferences followed. Within thirty years, more than half the official delegates came from the Younger Churches of these mission lands--indeed, at the Madras Conference of 1938, it was readily agreed that the ablest Christian delegation came, not from any Western country, but from China.

      Meanwhile, other churchmen were discovering what could be done together in facing social evils, in promoting international friendship and understanding, in facing the full implications of the gospel in human life. What were called Life and Work Conferences were held to discuss these matters, and, at last, men also dared to face together their differing faiths, and think things through together in what were termed Faith and Order Conferences.

      There have been disappointments, divisions, dead-ends; but, despite them all, a deepening sense of fellowship. Men came to glimpse what Paul meant when he wrote to the Philippians, "If Christ has any appeal, if love carries any sanctions, if the Spirit has really created a fellowship . . . be of the same mind" (2:1, 2). Slowly the conviction grew that all this striving towards union was not of man, but of God; that the real fellowship of the Church is created by the Holy Spirit, even as it is the Lord, and not men, who add to the Church daily such as are being saved (Acts 2:47).

      In the face of that conviction, the sense of unity, however strongly felt; the goodwill exchange of denominational courtesies, however hearty, are intolerably inadequate. No wonder that Christian leaders in India said as far back as 1919, "We believe that the challenge of the present hour . . . calls us to mourn our past divisions and turn to our Lord Jesus Christ, to seek in him the unity of the Body expressed in one visible Church. We face together the titanic task of the winning of India for Christ--one fifth of the human race. Yet, confronted by such an overwhelming responsibility, we find ourselves rendered weak and relatively impotent by our unhappy divisions--divisions for which we were not responsible, and which have been,

as it were, imposed upon us from without, divisions which we did not create, and which we do not desire to perpetuate."

      There speaks the Church realist. Fellowship across the barriers is not good enough--even when it does what was done in the two world wars of this century, and holds together the orphaned missions of the Church, so that no work is abandoned, whatever the tragic divisions of war. It is still not good enough, even when that fellowship prompts the steady flow of Christian money and goods to help the homeless refugees and hard-pressed Churches of our time. Something more is needed. Something much more must happen soon, or the Church will have missed its God-given cue in this emergency.

      Once some delegates to a Church conference were enjoying a rare time of fellowship. As delegates will, they relaxed together during sessions, and on one tour came to a picturesque old bridge. They crowded on it, and with cries of delight looked down at the beauties of the stream beneath them. Suddenly, one of their number noticed an old man puffing towards them, waving agitatedly. "Perhaps we're trespassing," said one delegate. "It's all right," shouted the Secretary of Conference as the old man came within hearing. "We're all Presbyterians from the Conference." Whereat the old man shouted back, "If you don't get off that bridge double smart quick, you'll all be Baptists!"

      The rising tides of God's opportunity for the Church to-day are swirling around the shaky foundations of denominationalism. Some want to safeguard their bridges--drive the piles deeper, repair the broken railings. They are afraid of what will happen if they leave that security, and plunge with their fellow-Christians into the beckoning unknown. "Who knows what will happen to us?" they fretfully ask. "The risk is

too great." Who knows? God knows! And something must happen soon, or the Church will have betrayed yet another generation.

      For not only do the facts of the situation demand the unceasing, undaunted search for union; not only does all the reality of Christian fellowship we have already shared impel us to reach out for something nearer to what "fellowship" meant to the New Testament Church-besides all this

      This is how Paul expressed the thought to the Ephesians: "His gifts were made that Christians might be properly equipped for their service, that the whole Body might be built up until the time comes when, in the unity of common faith and common knowledge of the Son of God, we arrive at real maturity--that measure of development which is meant by the fulness of Christ." (4:12, 13--Phillips). Obviously, for Paul Christ himself is in a real sense incomplete, unless the Church is "one in the Spirit." "Make it your aim to be at one in the Spirit," he urged, "and you will inevitably be at peace with one another. You all belong to one Body, of which there is one Spirit, just as you all experienced one calling to one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Father of us all, who is the One over all, the One working through all, and the One living in all" (Eph. 4:3-6--Phillips).

      Strong words like these show what Paul meant by the "faith of the Son of God." Passionate as was his yearning for that unity which reveals "real maturity" he saw it possible only on the basis of faith's strongest convictions. Indeed, great doctrines never ring more confidently through Paul's words than in this Epistle to the

Ephesians, which is so vitally concerned with unity. The unity which he sought, and which is still our goal, must be strongly based. That is why churches of Christ have pleaded so insistently for the restoration of New Testament Christianity, as an essential part of their witness for Christian unity. At their wisest they have not looked for blue-prints, nor sought a uniformity, such as never was and never will be. Like Dean Kershner, they have noted that "the early Christians differed about almost everything except the absolute authority of Christ, and apparently their unity was built upon that one unifying thread." "No creed but Christ" is for us a meaningless catch-cry unless for us, too, the supreme authority of Christ, Son of God and Saviour, becomes an impelling force towards the unity of all who so acknowledge him. For William Temple spoke wisely when he insisted, "It is not we who can heal the wounds in his Body. We confer and deliberate, and that is right. But it is only by coming closer to him that we can come nearer to one another."

      But how may we come closer to him? How may we arrive more truly at what Paul called "the unity of common faith and common knowledge of the Son?" Churches of Christ have insisted that one way to that knowledge, which we neglect at our peril, is through the Word which claims to reveal him. Our pioneers knew their Bibles in a way which shames our sometimes glib and casual use of proof-texts to bolster arguments. They searched the Scriptures, to learn more of him and the truth about his Church.

      Fearlessly, they brought everything in Church life and practice to the New Testament bar of judgment. The way to unity, they affirmed, lay in discovering and restoring what was essential in the life of the New Testament Church, whose one Head was Christ. Sometimes the search for New Testament forms seemed more important than restoring

the New Testament spirit, but there were always some alert to the fact that there can be no real Church of Christ in which "the mind of Christ" is not supreme.

      This is a witness which needs no apologies. Indeed, the time is ripe for great preaching of such a plea. For we rejoice that in every communion to-day scholars and others are turning with renewed zest to the study of the Bible, and bringing their lives, and the lives of their Churches, under its judgment. In this fresh, eager seeking we, too, must join, while bearing faithful witness to the truth as we have seen it.

      But we must draw closer to our Lord through experience and fellowship, as well as through his Word. Paul was a great teacher of the doctrines of the faith, but no prayer was ever more fervent than his "That I may know him!" He urged his fellow-Christians to grow up into Christ, to adventure together in love, to find their Lord in selfless service and devotion.

      Any unity achieved to-day without such a deepening spiritual "knowledge of the Son of

      God" would be both a delusion and a tragedy. The Churches rightly sensed that at the Amsterdam Assembly of the World Council of Churches , when it was affirmed, "We pray for the Churches, renewal as we pray for their unity. As Christ purifies us by his Spirit we shall find that we are drawn together, and that there is no gain in unity unless it is unity in truth and holiness."

      Remember those last words when you ponder on the dangers associated with the World Council of Churches. No one will deny that there are such dangers, but the leaders themselves are alive to them--and to the opportunities. They have repeatedly affirmed that they do not want a super World Church; that they do not stand (as secretary Visser't Hooft has put it) "for a

static unity between the Churches as they are." Apart from the World Council, there have been daring experiments in union and others are contemplated--not in a compromising mood of "unity at any price" but under what men deem to be the driving force of the Spirit of God. In such a time dare we fail to make our witness? And dare we compromise that witness by spiritual poverty?

      Phillips Brooks was right when he looked at pools of water on the beach at low tide, and said that, while some of them could be united by digging channels between them, they could only really be united when the flood-tide came in. We must pray for the coming of that unifying flood-tide in the life of the Church. But we must prepare for its coming. There are channels we must all help to dig on the local level, for it is there, among the churches we know best, that we must "earth" this passion for Christian unity. We must not despair at the little we can do, or the seeming slowness of its coming; the past fifty years have seen achievements in unity which would have seemed incredible to Church leaders at the turn of the century.

      Ruth Rouse comments, "The mixture in the bowl of the Church's life is bubbling, churning, changing--what will emerge?" As for that, Paul's words are still timeless, "He whose power is at work in us is powerful enough, and more than powerful enough, to carry out his purpose beyond all our hopes and dreams; may he be glorified in the Church, and in Christ Jesus, to the last generation of eternity. Amen." (Eph. 3:20, 21--Knox).