Welsh Journals

THE NEED FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY IN WALES. 1. BY A FREE CHURCHMAN. RELIGIOUS life in Wales has, in the main, developed along the same general lines as those of most countries of Western Christendom. National characteristics are always to be found, but they reflect the predominant religious tendency of each succeeding age. With the Reformation, came the under- mining of the system which had prevailed for so long a period. Within the area governed by National Churches there grew up religious communities, diverse in order and sometimes opposed in doctrine. This last phrase of all, denomination- alism, can hardly be more pronounced and triumphant than in Wales. We are so familiar with it, and its workings, that we have almost come to regard it as some- thing as inevitable as the order of nature. Throughout the whole Protestant world there is growing uneasiness on account of "our unhappy divisions Christians everywhere are embarrassed and per- plexed by the discrepancy between the unifying principles, which they believe are inherent in their religion, and the separatist traditions handed down to them by their fathers. They cannot close their ears to the Master's solemn prayer:- Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through Thy word that they may all be one even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us." The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and loyalty to the Lordship of Christ seem to demand a greater degree of unity than obtains at present in our religious life. It seems wrong to pray, as all Christians do, for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit," without doing some- thing to realise that fellowship, to a far greater degree than is possible under present conditions. This feeling is grad- ually growing stronger in Wales, as it certainly is in other countries. Has not the time come to reconsider the whole position without bias or prejudice? There are, to-day, a number of considerations, which make a frank and fair facing of the problem imperative. Some of them may be briefly mentioned. (1.) The changed attitude towards the Bible. The critical and historical studies of modern scholarship, have made imposs- ible the old feeling of certainty, i.e. one's own special interpretation of Scripture, to the exclusion of all other points of view. Our ancestors doubtless had many qual- ities which we do not possess, and perhaps some failings which events have made it easier for us to avoid and the historical approach to the Scriptures, makes it impossible for us to share their assurance of personal infallibility. Our tendency today is to say that the germ of all churches may be found in the New Testament, but the completed form of none. We cannot easily claim for our own churches Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware See that it has our trade mark You will buy Poison instead of food across the way." We no longer find it possible to believe in the exclusive legitimacy of our own denomination. The confidence which could build a system on a favourite text has been destroyed for ever by the modern method of Scripture interpretation. (2.) Certain definite aspects of Religious truth, fought for by particular denominations,