Fraternal Co-operation and a Federal Union.

These sentiments of Dr Boardman, as admirably expressed as they are sound and Scriptural, will commend themselves to this Presbytery, and to the Synod of Otago and Southland which adopted unanimously the overture I moved in 1902, that the Assembly should take steps for establishing an annual Conference or other Association of Christian Churches—All Christian Churches—which would make for practical co-operation of Christian Churches in the present, and which, without the sacrifice of truth to charity or of charity to truth, but with the triumph of both, would, in the providence of God, make for an ultimate fusion of Christian denominations into a zealous and powerful National Church of New Zealand. That line of action commended itself alike to the judgment of Presbytery and Synod, and the principles I have set forth above will, I venture to believe, commend themselves not only to this Presbytery, but to the Church at large. I am persuaded that if they had had due weight at the initial stages of this present Union movement, which is primarily a movement for Creed revision in the interests of the rationalistic tendencies favoured in some quarters, there would never have arisen this present situation. A frank statement by the movers in regard to their "working faith"—that is, their persuppositions as to the system of doctrine of the Westminster Confession, and as to the truthfulness, trustworthiness, and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures—would at once have revealed such radical differences of standpoint that it would have rendered a common expression of doctrine impossible, save on the principle, or want of principle abhorrent to the truth, of using words, as appears in the new Creed, of an ambiguous, evasive, and consequently misleading, import. This, if it were done deliberately, would be an agreement to deceive. And if ignorantly, we ask, with the Apostle, "Even things without life giving a voice, whether pipe or harp if they give not a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain voice, who shall prepare himself for war?" If we cannot agree on common presuppositions, we cannot agree on a common expression of the consequences of them. If you have got new wine, why, of course, by all means hasten to nut it into new wineskins. Do not put it into the skins of Westminster: for all you have got of Westminster and the "evangelical succession" are the skins—and the fine Westminster aroma! But the wine itself is gone. We hold no brief for the skins of Westminster, but we do relish the Westminster wine. Are we not agreed, therefore, to speak the truth that we have learned in unambiguous terms, as we stand by the Word of God, in the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments? And we care for no inspiration that gives us a page 61 fabulous history of revelation, or a history of anything that is less than true. We have cast anchor therefore, on the truthfulness, trustworthiness, and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, and there, with God's help, we mean to abide. If that truth be lost, all is lost. Our "Union" and numbers, our learning and wealth and religious philosophies will avail us nothing. And, finally, without hastily forming a mechanical Union, founded on negations and compromise shall we not, as the best contribution we, at all events, can make to the Universal Church of Christ, strive to make our Presbyterian Zion more than ever worthy of her noble ancestry and inheritance? Has any Church for her size a nobler?

"Therefore I wish that peace may still
Within her walls remain,
And ever may her palaces
Prosperity retain."