The Church Congress has been in session in London during
the week. On Tuesday the Archbishop of Canterbury preached the sermon at the opening service in St. Paul's, and delivered a forcible plea for unity. That binding power, the lack of which had hitherto falsified the desire of our Lord and his Apostles, was to be found, not merely in union with God and Christ, but also in charity between man and man, the spirit of mutual trust and the spirit of perpetual toleration. Unity, he went on to explain, was the indispensable preliminary to reun ion, for "it was impossible not to see that the union of every separate body was the first condition of the union with other religious bodies, and that they must learn to tolerate one another, and at the same time to act in accordance with the rules that the body to which they were assigned by Providence had laid down for their guidance." The Archbishop dwelt in most impressive language on the mischief of those divisions which spoiled their service and wasted their strength. These dis- putes, though petty in themselves, had to be handled because they were taken up with such insistence; and they could not lead to any valuable result, unless they led, as they should, "to that self-sacrifice which made men ready to give up for the good of all that which pleased themselves." It was
111, characteristic of the courage of the Archbishop that, though still suffering from severe indisposition, he should not have shrank from the delivery of this powerful appeal.
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