UNITY BEFORE TRUTH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Feb 14, 1906

UNITY BEFORE TRUTH.

Will This Conception of History Be Repeated?

IF we are to judge from the utterances of William Hayes Ward, D.D., LL.D., one of the chief promoters of church unity and federation, and one of the principal figures in the late Inter-Church Conference for Federation, in New York, everything else must give way to unity, even to the annulling of God's law. Is this too strong a conclusion? Let us see.

Mr. Ward had an article on the subject ("A Federal Congress of Churches") in the Independent, Nov. 16, 1905. After saying that the conference represents 18,000,000 people, he declares that "it is the first attempt ever made to unite these churches officially in a single body;" and that "this is an attempt to bring the church partially back to its condition of unity in the time of the apostles." Then referring to the threatened schism in the early church, healed at the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), he states:

But still more, the principle accepted and announced [at that council] was not uniformity, but liberty. The liberty then allowed was something amazing. It seemed to overthrow, and it did annul, the most sacred code of Sinai. We can hardly conceive anything more revolutionary. But such was the necessity of unity, and such the force of the spiritual element as the root of Christianity, that even this amazing concession was inscribed on the banner of religious liberty.

Now we know from God's Word that nothing of that kind was done. There were certain ceremonial differences between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile converts. The Jews saw that one thing to which they held—outward circumcision—was not essential, so proved evidently then by Paul, as afterward in Rom. 4:9-16, and therefore it was yielded; and on the other hand, it was clearly seen that some of the customs of the Christians from the Gentiles directly bore upon the moral requirements of the Decalogue, and it was conceded that such as did so bear, summed up in four "necessary things," should be prohibited. But nowhere did any action for unity "annul the most sacred code of Sinai," the Decalogue. Hear Paul to the Gentiles: "Do we then make void [annul] the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law." Rom. 3:31.

But it is Dr. Ward's conception, and doubtless the conception of many others, that unity is more important ("first pure, then peaceable," James 3:17) than purity of doctrine or the truth of God's everlasting law, and therefore for the sake of unity the law, if in the way, will be annulled, crucified afresh, even as often as its Giver. Will the Federation act above this conception of its promoters?

But, on such ground, what bodies could not unite? And on that basis, what should hinder the union of the forces of light and darkness, of heaven and hell? Even so the church has united with the world. Jesus prayed for oneness in the beautiful prayer to which Dr. Ward alludes, but He prayed that His disciples might be one as He and the Father were one. He also prayed, in order that this union might be effectual, "Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." John 17:17.