During this week you have been listening-to many speakers on many subjects concerned with the Christian life in the modern world. They have spoken to you about the Christian life in the home; in the school; in work in the factory, the field and the office; in citizenship and Home Affairs; in Foreign Affairs and international relations. It has not been my privilege to hear those speakers, nor to hear what you have been saying about it all among yourselves. But know that those speakers have come to you from different ‘denominations,’ and from what I hear, I gather that they have nevertheless shown a pretty considerable measure of agreement about all these things. Perhaps you have been agreeably surprised; you had expected, perhaps, that they had all been anxious only to praise their own particular wares. Instead of which you have found, I believe, that about all these things they seem to think pretty much alike; and that instead of wanting to sell you their own rival goods you have found them all anxious only to be loyal and faithful to God and his Wood and to love and serve their neighbour in and for God.

Now there can be no doubt that all this is a very good thing, and for it we must be very thankful to God. But the task which is set me this evening is—strange as it may seem—a much more delicate one. I have to speak to you about ‘The Christian Life in the Church.’ And that at once raises a question which perhaps has been haunting you all along.