THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY 311 



they bear witness to the reasonableness of dissent and the effective- 

 ness of subdivided organization. But, while the utilitarian value 

 of sectarianism is recognized as an aid to executive efficiency, the 

 theological significance of sectarianism is distinctly a waning in- 

 terest. The fires of theological animosity that burned freely in the 

 fierce controversial wind of an earlier time require artificial fanning 

 at the present to keep them alive. This occurs not because of a 

 declining interest in truth, but because of the unifying and irenic 

 effect of advancing knowledge. Without inquiring to what extent 

 the control of theology by ecclesiasticism accounts for the ferocious 

 sectarian conflicts of the past, it is evident that the struggle of 

 theology for intellectual independence has found an answer in the 

 common Christian heart, has projected a beneficent influence into 

 many parts of the divided church of Jesus Christ. Larger problems 

 have supplanted smaller issues. Reverent and fearless scholarship 

 has effected a redistribution of theological interests, and has attracted 

 toward aspects of truth that transcend all sectarian issues, forces of 

 mind and heart once spent in rivalry and evil-speaking. It is to be 

 admitted with joy that this relative supersession of sectarian bitter- 

 ness by fraternal interest in the common truth is being recognized 

 with more or less approval in many seats of ecclesiastical authority. 

 In the councils and schools of Christendom in the west and its 

 missions in the east there is some evidence of irenic readjustment 

 and of movement toward theological consensus. But there is need of 

 suitable non-ecclesiastical leadership of this movement; of university 

 leadership, the intellectual sanity, moral seriousness, and religious 

 strength of which are beyond question. Around every such univer- 

 sity centre should gather those who would enter into the fundamen- 

 tal conceptions of our religion, not in a spirit hostile to ecclesiasticism, 

 but in a spirit uninfluenced by ecclesiastical presuppositions, seeking 

 only the impregnable rock on which Christ has built his Church. 

 From every such centre should go forth apostles of a larger theo- 

 logical consensus, penetrating with their influence all sections of the 

 divided Church, and advancing everywhere that unity which is 

 according to knowledge, that charity which rejoiceth in the truth. 

 Many of the denominational schools of theology contain teachers 

 in sympathy with this larger consensus, and more interested in pro- 

 moting it than in defining the grounds of difference. Great are their 

 services, even where impeded by the atmosphere of hereditary 

 conservatism of the disciplinary hand of authority. The gracious 

 influence of such lives, and, in particular, their appeal to young 

 university graduates and to the educated laity at large, suggests the 

 direction in which non-clerical thought is moving. Venerable as 

 are the sectarian organizations, sacred and saintly as are the names 

 that wrought, by life and by death, to achieve the divisions of the 



