dy, and is pledged
to the service of this body. Sometimes the central body is narrow,
as in the case of the more orthodox Protestant denominations;
sometimes it is liberal, as in the case of the Unitarians and
Universalists. [11] But always there is a distinctive form of
organization, or type of ritual, or doctrine of belief, or spirit of
association, which binds these separate churches into a single
group; and always this distinctive feature is something which had
its origin, and still finds its vitality, in the thought and
experience of an earlier age. Every one of our denominations, and
every one of the churches in our denominations, is representative of
past controversies, not of present interests and duties. No one sect
can be distinguished from any other, except by a reference to the
text books of Christian history.

Now with the intrusion of the social question into religion, a new
concept of church organization came immediately to the fore. The
unit of fellowship was now no longer the denomination, but the
community. The centre of life and allegiance was no longer the
challenge of ancient controversy, but the cry of present day human
need. The more I became interested in questions of social change,
the less I was concerned with questions of denominational welfare.
The more I became absorbed in the people of New York City, the
closer became my fellowship with other ministers similarly absorbed,
and the remoter my fellowship with those who were bound to me only
by the accident of the Unitarian tradition. More and more my hand
and heart went out directly to men who saw and labored for the
better day of which I dreamed; and only indirectly to those with
whom I was appointed to serve, but who could not or would not catch
the vision of my dreams. An irreconcilable conflict was here being
joined--the old, old conflict between a dead and a living
fellowship. It was my intuitive, although unconscious knowledge of
this fact, which made me a rebel in every Unitarian gathering of the
last ten years. It was a similarly unconscious instinct of
self-preservation which taught my Unitarian brethren, to whom the
old association was still central, to resent the things I sought. We
had been born together, and we lived together; our past and our
present were joint possessions. But when we faced the future, we
divided; my [12] colleagues, many of them, were content with old,
familiar ways, while I sought new associations.

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