IRENIC MOVEMENTS 1 53 



Ironic movements of great moment have 

 been those which issued in the formation 

 of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846; of the 

 British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 ; 

 the American Bible Society in 1816 ; the 

 proposals of the House of Bishops of the 

 Protestant Episcopal Church in 1886, which 

 were reaffirmed by the Pan- Anglican Coun- 

 cil of Bishops at Lambeth Palace in 1888; 

 the proposals of a more catholic type sent 

 forth by the Congregational churches of 

 the United States in 1895; the formation of 

 the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, of 

 which Theodore F. Seward, Esq., is the 

 leading spirit, in 1893 ; and the formation 

 of the League of Catholic Unity in 1895. 

 These are all parts of a great and wide- 

 spread movement which will not fail nor 

 be discouraged until the churches of God 

 are not only one in love and faith and hope, 

 but one in a confederated, or united, or or- 

 ganic life. When the people on a certain 

 vessel skirting the South American coast 

 were dying of thirst and cried for water to 

 those in a boat passing near by, the an- 

 swer came back: "Throw down your 

 buckets into the water." The sufferers 

 were sailing in the mouth of the broad 



