e
very varieties by which they have approached this proving them to be
one. Disjoint them and then you have some miserable sect--Calvinism,
or Unitarianism; the unity has dispersed. And so again with the unity
of the Churches. Whereby would we produce unity? Would we force on
other Churches our Anglicanism? Would we have our thirty-nine
articles, our creeds, our prayers, our rules and regulations, accepted
by every Church throughout the world? If that were unity, then in
consistency you are bound to demand that in God's world there shall be
but one colour instead of the manifold harmony and accordance of which
this universe is full; that there should be but one chaunted note--the
one which we conceive most beautiful. This is not the unity of the
Church of God. The various Churches advance different doctrines and
truths. The Church of Germany something different from those of the
Church of England. The Church of Rome, even in its idolatry, proclaims
truths which we would be glad to seize. By the worship of the Virgin,
the purity of women; by the rigour of ecclesiastical ordinances, the
sanctity and permanence of eternal order; by the very priesthood
itself, the necessity of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the
dissenting bodies themselves--mere atoms of aggregates as they
are--stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the separateness
of the individual conscience, the right of independence.

Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We do not speak of
peace in a single country. We say peace subsists between different
countries where war _might_ be. There can be no _peace_ between two
men who agree in everything; peace subsists between those who differ.
There is no peace between Baptist and Baptist; so far as they are
Baptists, there is perfect accordance and agreement. There may be
peace between you and the Romanist, the Jew, or the Dissenter, because
there are angles of sharpness which might come into collision if they
were not subdued and softened by the power of love. It was given to
the Apostle Paul to discern that this was the ground of unity. In the
Church of Christ he saw men with different views, and he said So far
from that variety destroying unity, it was the only ground of unity.
There are many doctrines, all of them different, but let those
varieties be blended together--in other words, let there be the peace
of love, and then you will have unity.

Once