Jesus prays for his disciples: “I ask not only on behalf of these,
but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,
that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may
they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent
me.” (John 17:20-21 NRSV)
The language of Christian feeling can never be successfully counterfeited. The language of the dry intellect, the language of the head, may be misunderstood. Hence wherever religion has consisted in theological dogmas alone, fierce strifes have arisen.
But when the gospel has been addressed to men's hearts, and has been received by faith in its transforming power, the weapons of denominational warfare are cast away, and believers vie with one another in magnifying our common Saviour. Such, thank God, are the happy times upon which we have fallen. We live in a day when the Holy Spirit has come down upon the evangelical churches, and we now understand one another, because our hearts speak. In the eras of the warmest theological controversy this heart unison was not noticed amid the din and discord of clashing swords. Professor Shedd says that
‘Tried by the test of exact dogmatic statement there is a plain difference between the Arminian creed and that of the Calvinist; but tried by the test of practical piety and devout feeling, there is little difference between the character of John Wesley and John Calvin. The practical religious life is much more a product of the Holy Spirit than is the speculative construction of truth.'
The advance of spirituality will be the advance of that unity
for which Jesus prayed in his wonderful high-priestly prayer in the
seventeenth of St. John.
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