A Letter from Lambeth The letter which has emerged from
the discussions between Anglican and Free Church leaders at Lambeth last week appeals for general co-operation between all Christian Churches while a fuller scheme of " actual reunion " is being worked out. With that appeal there will be universal sympathy. The form response to it will take will vary with the conditions prevailing in different localities ; where the spirit of co-operation exists oppor- tunities of expressing it are never lacking. What is spoken of as actual reunion, of course, raises far larger issues, as the signatories of the letter in question fully realize. Methodist reunion has no doubt done something to create a desire everywhere for the obliteration of exist- ing divisions wherever possible. But between the Methodist bodies which united last month there were no real differences surviving at all. Between Anglicans and Free Churchmen as a whole the differences—or, to put it at the lowest, the distinctions—in matters of creed and of form go deep down, and to attempt to ignore their reality would be fatal. None of the participants in last week's conversations will be in danger of falling into that error. Their task is to disc-over how far it may be possible, while preserving all necessary distinctions within the one fold, so to live and so to speak and act as to convince the world that the unity is fundamental, and the distinctions within it, not indeed incidental, but essentially subordi-
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