OUR special correspondent’s account of the concluding meetings of the Mürren Conference accents the fundamental differences on most vital questions between Catholics and the Protestant sects. During the discussion of the Eucharist, Dr. Glover re-stated the Protestant position, and although there is an interesting tendency among the younger Nonconformist ministers to some understanding of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, official Protestantism, now almost entirely a religion of negation, is emphatic as ever in its repudiation of the Mass and all that it signifies. This being so, we would repeat our doubt of the wisdom of Anglo-Catholics taking part in these interdenominational discussions. Indeed, it is mainly to draw attention to the danger that we have reported the Mürren conference at some length. So far as it will affect the trend of religious history at all, it is far more likely, as our correspondent points out, to lead to a pan-Protestant alliance than the reunion for which Catholics pray. This pan-Protestant alliance seems to be in the mind of that very able ecclesiastic, the Archbishop of Uppsala, and it is for some such end that next year the Stockholm Conference has been arranged. Were it effected, the alliance might well be a useful instrument for social progress and the encouragement of international good will, but it could not hasten reunion as we understand it. The reunion of Christendom is dependent on the acceptance of the Catholic Faith as it was understood and accepted by the primitive and undivided Church.
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