THE LORD MAYOR AND RELIGIOUS UNITY.
tee THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—In these days of exceptional pressure upon its restricted space, can the Spectator place on record the Lord Mayor of London's suggestion for a Mansion House Conference on Religious Unity ? The proposal appeared a fortnight ago in the Daily Chronicle, and was followed up day by day for more than a week with the views of various religious leaders. On the whole, the Lord Mayor's idea that if the heads of the Churches could be got together they might arrive at a fundamental agreement for the promotion of complete religious unity throughout the British Empire was cordially approved. But rocks were sighted. Needless to say, Sir Charles Wakefield saw them. Ruskin wrote on an Academy catalogue : "Fine art is that in which the head, the heart, and the hand move together." It is so in a well-ordered religious system, and the Lord Mayor frankly confessed that his heart was before his head in the initial scheme he propounded : "And yet I know very well that I am most truly myself and that I do my duty very much better when I trust to my heart." May I, a minister among the people whom Wesley doclered to be "the friends of all, the enemies of none," express the hope that the Lord Mayor will not lot his dream die ? Any- thing in the nature of organic reunion, as between the Church of England and any branch of Nonconformity, or even as betweea the varioui Nonconformist Churches, may be impracticable ; but there is abundant room for such a development of the spirit of religious unity as a Mansion House Conference would be sure to generate. What else could eventuate if the Lord Mayor put his guests to tests like there: " Gentlemen. of all the Churches, cannot you, in these war days at least, arrange to prat together in every parish ? And can you not co-ordinate your activities everywhere, often in alliance with the municipalities, for the common
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