“A disunited Christendom cannot effectually achieve the work of the Christian Church. So long as we are disunited controversy and rivalry will continue, and these things cannot but make charity more difficult and bitterness more prevalent. Every effort to secure Christian unity will prove disruptive and futile if vital convictions are compromised or Christian consciences stultified; rather must the aim be the frank recognition of the things in which Christians differ as well as those in which they agree. The fact is that Christians are not agreed as to what is essential in Christianity, and the sense of stewardship of the essential truth is not peculiar to any single Christian communion, but is felt in each of the sundered parts of Christendom. Therefore we need to confer together, in a spirit of loving candor to discern what is true and vital in the position of each communion in the hope of attaining to a common mind, in which everything that is precious shall be treasured, and be given its just and proportionate value.”

Surely such a project, narrowly restricted in scope as it is, yet animated by a most noble spirit is certain to produce permanent, beneficial results. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the “world conference” may be (the date set for it is 1927) it is certain to result in an increase of mutual charity, mutual understanding, mutual tolerance and teachableness. It will mark another milestone on the road to that ideal religious fellowship which is the much desired goal ere a divine civilization can be established. For assuredly it is not enough that we be brothers and sisters in Christ, we must be brothers and sisters in Humanity, with all the rest of mankind, that is what an ideal fellowship stands for and nothing less can ever fully satisfy. At Benares in India plans have been consummated for the erection of a “Hall of all Religions” at which the study of comparative religion is to be pursued under the broadest and most catholic auspices ever known. Lectures are to be delivered on the great religions by authorities drawn from all the historic faiths; a library is to be constructed and stocked with the best literature in all tongues on comparative religion; a dormitory is to be erected for the benefit of the resident student-body. An appropriation of about $5,000,000 has been set aside for the fulfilment of the plan as agreed upon by a board of trustees including representatives of all of the seven extant great religions. Thus in India and other parts of the world there will be demonstrations of an organic fellowship of faiths—as there has already been in Persia—that ideal religious unity of Bahá’u’lláh—and the goal of all Bahá’í religious endeavor.