"Mightiest Adventure"

A great many potatoes have been grown since Martin Luther, hammer in hand, tacked his famed 95 theses on the church door at Wittenburg, in 1517. In 400 years the Christian Church has been split a hundred different ways by apostasy. Sects have sprung up like mushrooms in the night; few have died.

Twenty years ago, Canadian Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, perhaps remembering the words of St. Mark,* decided to serry their ranks and join a new United Church of Canada. For 20 years, excepting the War period, union has been hotly debated by a minority of Presbyterian irreconcilables. Hardly a dissentient voice came from Methodists or Congregationalists.

Last year, the Dominion Parliament at Ottawa passed a vote legalizing the union. It provided that a majority vote of each congregation shall decide whether that congregation shall join the union or stay out. The voting is still taking place and, from known results, is sure to return a handsome majority of Unionists. The union of the three churches is to be consummated in Toronto on June 10. Each denomination is to hold a great and last conclave, each is to form a separate procession, converge upon a central point, march on as the United Church of Canada to the trumpet blaring and vocal rendition of Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.

This movement, which has been termed "the mightiest adventure in Christian annals since the Reformation," has not proceeded without venom and recrimination. One report had it: "Families have been disunited, friendships of a lifetime broken."

Many stories are told: A minister was dismissed from the house of one of his elders with that elder's wife's anathema ringing in his ears. "You are a thief, sir; you are trying to steal our property--you are a traitor to the Presbyterian Church--you're not a Presbyterian at all; you're not even an honest man."

On another occasion, a Methodist minister ventured to express the hope that, whatever their present divergencies were, his Presbyterian brother and he would be one in spirit after the Union. Returned the Presbyterian: "We certainly shall not--you'll be a Methodist, sir."

Again, a Unionist asked: "Don't you think that the Grace of God does the same kind of job under a Methodist waistcoat as beneath a Presbyterian one?" The reply: "The Grace of God can only do its best with such material as it has to work on."

-St. Mark iii; 25: And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.