we include in our estimates of
parochial responsibility, not merely enrolled members, but the entire
Lutheran population of the District, Russians, Poles, Slovaks,
Bohemians, Hungarians, Letts, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Dutch, Germans,
Swedes, Norwegians, Finns and Danes, to say nothing of the multitudes of
American birth from the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, from Pennsylvania,
Virginia, Ohio and the West, the number of people claiming to be
Lutherans amounts to more than five hundred thousand souls.

To minister as we should to such a constituency, we need co-operation in
place of competition. The work of cultivating effectively such a field
can never be done by churches so hopelessly divided as ours.

Other churches, Protestant and Catholic, with a centralized
ecclesiastical organization, are able to work together as one body and
make plans for their work covering the entire Metropolitan District. We,
with our strong individualism, cannot vie with them. In our polity we
are extreme congregationalists and must pay for our freedom.

But there is much that our churches have in common. Our flocks are not
alienated from each other as much as are the shepherds. The formation of
local groups throughout the greater city, co-operating in common causes,
or at least refraining from a polemical policy, would pave the way for a
better understanding of our mutual needs and opportunities for service.

Three things, at least, might be done without compromising the faith or
violating the spirit of our church life:

1. We might meet for the purpose of forming each other's acquaintance
and for the discussion of practical questions. Perhaps none of us is
quite so heretical as the synodical divergence would lead a layman to
suppose.

2. We might meet for the discussion of vital questions of religion and
morals. It is one thing to read about these things in books. It is quite
another thing to listen to a spoken presentation warm with the sympathy
of a living experience.

3. We might recognize each other's spheres of influence and federate our
forces in meeting the needs of our vast community.

In the meantime we are slowly learning that the aspirations and
convictions that unite us are greater than the things that separate us.
The clearer comprehension of the principles we hold and of the work we
have to do, and the sense of our responsibility as one of the larger
communions of the metropolis, compel us more and more to emphasize not