GENERAL PRINCIPLES \3 



tian nations. As different thinkers vari- 

 ously express it, "the centrifugal age of 

 Christianity is closed ; The centripetal ac- 

 tion has begun." 1 " The age of division 

 is over: that of reunion is coming on." 

 Thus viewed, the movement for church 

 unity is but a recoil from the sectarian 

 results of the Reformation under the great 

 historic law of action and reaction, cause 

 and effect. 



Still another and the most practical view 

 is, that the unification of the Church has 

 become necessary by its critical position in 

 modern civilization. Christianity has ever 

 been more or less involved in the civiliza- 

 tion which has accompanied it as part of 

 its own historic development. In the 

 primitive age it encountered a Pagan civili- 

 zation, whose art, philosophy, and politic 

 were hostile to its lofty claims. In the 

 middle ages, it had Christianized and con- 

 quered this pagan civilization, rendering 

 its philosophy a handmaid to divinity, 

 resolving its art into a stately ritual, and 

 subjecting even the State to the Church. 

 But now, in the present reforming age, it 

 finds itself divorced, falsely and tempo- 



1 Rev. Prof. George P. Fisher, DD. 



