98 CHURCH UNITY 



tration will not please ; who, therefore, 

 may wish to stand outside it for a time 

 or permanently. No constraint must be 

 applied to such to make them conform. 

 Were the reunion of Christendom to cost 

 any impairment of religious liberty, most of 

 us would prefer that it should not come. 



Another observation helps show that the 

 task of absolutely necessary unification in 

 church externals is less impossible than it 

 at first seems. While nearly every denomi- 

 nation in Christendom was justified in be- 

 ginning to be, time has in many directions 

 so far removed denominational differences 

 that nothing but tradition now prevents 

 fusion. The Baptists and the Free Bap- 

 tists well illustrate this. There is no longer 

 any propriety whatever in their apartness. 

 The regular Baptists are no longer exclu- 

 sively Calvinistic, nor do they uniformly 

 practise or insist upon close communion. 

 These two bodies could blend without the 

 slightest surrender or sacrifice on the part 

 of either, and with the greatest blessing 

 to both. Little if any higher is the fence 

 between Baptists and Congregationalists. 

 Both have the same doctrines and the same 

 polity. Nothing separates them except 



