Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/85

Rh. This position is fairly represented by the overture presented by Mr. Macdonnell to the Presbytery of Toronto, which was based primarily on the proposition that "the Church of Christ should be careful not to exclude from the ministry any man whom the Lord of the Church would receive." Mr. Macdonnell illustrated his meaning by pointing to godly men in the Methodist and other churches, admired by us all, and gladly acknowledged to be true ministers of the Gospel, whom, nevertheless, we would not admit as teachers into our hedged and walled portion of the Church. We cannot but think, however, that we should be as loyal to God's truth as charitable to our fellowmen. This position, moreover, appears to us to be founded on a mistaken view of the nature of the Church and of Church unity, as well as on an insufficient realization of the difficulties of minimum Confessions. Its apparent liberality may, after all, prove not to be wholly out of affinity with the illiberal conception which identifies "our" Church with the Church of God, and seeks the fusion of all denominations into one external body on account of difficulty in conceiving of the Church as one amid a multiplicity of forms of organization, creed, and life. The last few years have given birth to many schemes to secure Church unity by some external means, or in some external sense—by inclusion in a common organization, as if unity were attainable "by building a great house around a divided family," or by enforced uniformity in forms of worship, or the like—none of them the product of a truly liberal spirit. We have but to open our eyes to see that the living Church of God is already one in the unity of the Spirit, or awaits, for its full realization, only the spirit of oneness in our hearts. If it were, indeed, true that "our Church" constitutes the