Welsh Journals

with the express emphasis of its Lord reared ethic above ritual. To the Welsh Baptist of the older pattern- all honour to him-all this will sound unfamiliar and perhaps recreant, but it is what younger Baptists are honestly getting to feel. To talk of unity, without being prepared, at least by inter-communion, member- ship is another question-to recognise the true discipleship of other Christians, is to be hopelessly unpractical, and also to commit oneself to an immense task of proselytism amongst other denominations, which is hardly like to speed the coming of the King- dom of God, which we all desire and for which the world waits. A Baptist Minister. The spirit, matter, and message of the article on the above subject, in the February number of The Welsh Outlook, seem to me to be most admirable and timely. Even in Wales, we are at last beginning to make a little less noise and fury than we once did about our denominational shibboleths, and to lay more stress on the things that do really matter. In my opinion, the chief factor in the formation of this changed attitude is the new light that has come from recent biblical criticism. For Christianity in Wales has pre- eminently always been a Bible religion "-if united it would certainly have been more really biblical- and our denominational differences have been chiefly upheld by the silent assumption which was cherished concerning the verbal inspiration of the Bible, a doctrine which was of course universally accepted and taken for granted. Text was bandied against text,— a process by which virtually anything or everything may have been proved or disproved. Such an assumption has now been finally-and, let us add, reverently-laid to rest, not only by the higher criticism, but even by the lower criticism of the sacred records. In view of the findings of biblical scholars, and in view of the present trend of thought generally, to emphasize as before our denominational differences is really childish, even laughable, were it not that the issues at stake are so serious. There is nothing to-day in doctrine to prevent, for instance, the two chief Methodist bodies in Wales (Calvinistic and Wesleyan) from joining forces,-nothing save the be- nighted members of both connexions. All those who are conversant with modem thought know this full well, and it is time that all such should speak out, so that two at any rate of the Christian bodies, to begin with, should no longer waste their time and substance in fighting over dead issues, instead of fighting in a more efficient way than they now can against the ignorance, the superstition, and the individual and social evils which are yet all too rampant about us. As far as I can see, speaking quite dispassionately, there ought indeed to be nothing that should prevent us from having at present more than two branches of the Christian Church, both in Wales and in the whole of Christendom. For just now the only two types of Christianity that do seriously differ from one another, are what may be called the evangelical on the one hand, and the ritualistic on the other,-or, if you prefer to call them so, the prophetical and the priestly type. Even these may finally be formally included in a higher synthesis-that synthesis really exists already in the Invisible Church-and they are even now to some extent included in the Visible Church for the priest is sometimes the best of prophets (e.g., the late revered Father Stanton,) and the so-called prophet, yea, in Nonconformist Wales, may sometimes be full of the priest-spirit. But at present it is evident-witness the Kikuyu contro- versy-that we are not yet cultured and Christian enough to intermix these two types in one outward unity. Nevertheless, even this division is pitiful and should shame us to something nobler, when it has been reiterated throughout the Kikuyu discussion how Mohammedanism presents a united front in Africa and carries everything before it, while the Christians rage against one another. This being the case, how much more ought we of all evangelical churches in Wales, to close our ranks in order to bring about the day when the Church-as far as we are concerned -shall be one on earth even as it is in Heaven ? If The Welsh Outlook, the Beimiad, and the rest of us can do something to hasten that blessed day, then we shall verily be furthering the Kingdom, and our little nation may ultimately be the means of making a very solid and precious contribution to the life and thought and efficiency of the One Holy Catholic Church of Christ. May I make one practical suggestion which, if acted upon, would undoubtedly lead to better things ? Has not the time come when all the evan- gelical churches of Wales should have one common hymnbook ? Already in the present collections of hymns, Paul, Apollos, and Cephas are indiscrimi- nately ours. In conducting a service, it is possible to give out from any of the five denominational hymnbooks five hymns composed by a Churchman, a Calvinist, a Congregationalist, a Wesleyan, and a Baptist, respectively. Why not therefore have one hymnbook, just as we have already one Bible? The common praise of our common Saviour would serve, as well as anything, to destroy the unmeaning barriers that now separate those that are of the household of the evangelical faith. A Wesleyan Methodist Minister.