IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sni-,The letter of . Geo.. G. Armstrong in your last issue raises a _qtiestion which, I submit, should be dealt with before this useful syrriposium _closes. . In sixteen single .. articles,- sixteen _disciplined minds . can agree. - It -looks .as if .the.se- representative men might charm their flocks into one .fold.
But are matters quite as simple as that ? . -
There . may be . general _agreement about the twentyrsix: letters of the alphabet. The variations on -those _ twenty-six letters make up English literature about -_which. there is no such accord. A _,doen.. gardeners may . agree in .the inain about the _essential .things .for. a _good garden.. Give them a free hand and where .w.ould the agreement- be.? :It -is .v,ery easy to say_ that Christ ianqy is "woefully divided becanse the man in the street thinks FO. But iS a circle of a dozen related families divided because they prefer _to_ live in:different-places,. and would .on -no. account spend a, month's :holiday: tokether- eyea in Arcadia ? -The possibility_ is _that : they_ are_more
united for general good than if they went in for a community kitchen at the demand for standardization.
Men's bodies are immeasurably older than the infant souls that are tented therein. How can they adopt a mere numerical union to find a path to the Father, Who is Spirit ? There are all the phenomena of the search on the part of the sincere minority. There is the tragic indifference of the many to spiritual issues. To describe all that as disunion is unfair and misleading. Fellowship is made in Heaven. Its secret is not in organization, however united it looks to the man in the strect.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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