THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT 201 



f required. The one Church will be an or- 

 Aganism, intensely alive, and an organism 

 / is never made; it always grows. In this 

 ^-ease the order must be, first the spiritual, 

 and afterward the natural or visible. This 

 large and complex problem has many fac- 

 tors, only a few of which we can hope even 

 to mention. 



I. The student of current events cannot 

 fail to have been impressed by the move- 

 ment toward unity evident in all the 

 world. For -centuries the trend of things 

 I was toward individualism. That has not 

 lost momentum, but it is now met by a co- 

 ordinate movement toward unity. The 

 desire for a united Church is one manifes- 

 tation of a growing longing for a united 

 world, and that united world is beginning 

 to take shape in our time. The most re- 

 markable fact in contemporary history is 

 the progress which the nations have al- 

 ready made toward what we might call a 

 /"United States of the World" if it had 

 i not already been named " the Kingdom of 

 God." The idea of the unity of all 

 nations is no idle dream. 



There is a movement among groups of 

 nations toward a limited unity. The 



