CHURCH UNITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1977, 15 May 1919, Page 1

CHURCH UNITY.

AND THE ATTITUDE OP THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. Wanganui, May 12. The Rev. Gray Dixon, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, is at present paying an official visit to Wanganui. Speaking at a welcome gathering, the Moderator said that he appeared among them in the interests of unity and the historic continuity of the Church. It was very strange that the sister national church of the Empire, the Anglican Communion, for which they had all respect, and with which, as with every branch of the one Catholic Church, they desired the fullest co-operation, should so studiously ignore their historic and national position. Anglicans spoke of them as Nonconformists, but members of the Church of Scotland were not Nonconformists. As a matter of fact they would make themselves Nonconformists by joining the Church of England, whose places of worship were in the Scottish Statute Book designated as “Episcopalian meeting houses.” t Surely it was possible for English and Scottish churchmen to cordially recognise one another. The Scottish Churchman, with his broader outlook, was amazed at the pathetic spectacle of English Churchmen solemnly shaking their heads over supposed difficulties in the way of united worship with Christians who held the same essential Catholic faith. They seemed to share the spirit of the Highland chief who, calling upon Governor McNab, of Canada, left his card with the superscription: “The McNab.” Returning the call, the Governor left a card with the designation on it in largo characters: “The other McNab.” Especially in these rimes of enlightenment it behoved every church to remember that there was more than one McNab in the world.