I do not want the walls of separation between different orders of Christians to be destroyed, but only lowered, that we may shake hands a little easier over them.
Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriæ of old eruptions, grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine, and the sustaining corn.
If God allows us to remain Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopalian, it may be on account of the unconverted, that they may be without excuse; that every type of man may be confronted with a corresponding type of doctrine and of method. Surely there are means adapted to your state, and ministries fitted to your peculiar temperament.
It is neither possible nor desirable to make all men think alike. Variety is the very basis of harmony; and, in the sphere of ecclesiastical experience, oneness of feeling is vastly preferable to unanimity of belief. The voice of God, however, as uttered in the events and experiences of the past hundred years, enjoins upon the private membership of the church the culture of that "unity of the Spirit" which is begotten of the Holy Ghost, and which derives from its Divine Author the life in which it resides, the elements of which it is composed, and the impulses under which it acts.
Were we all one body, we should lose the tremendous stimulation that comes from the present arrangement, and I fear that our uniformity would become the uniformity of death and the tomb.
