"The Church's One Foundation"

Samuel Stone, 1866

Everyone knows that there are many denominations of Christian believers, and that they don’t always get along, and indeed, over the course of many years, some, like the Quakers and the Unitarians, have ceased to be recognizably Christian in any sense at all. But Christ said to his apostles, on the night before men nailed him to the Cross, in their endless strife against God and one another, that he prayed that they would all be one in him, as he was one with the Father. And we hope that the Babel that man has made of Pentecost will be resolved in heaven, and we may meet all our fellow Christians there, all those who soldiered on in this life, though we may not have recognized their uniforms at the time.
Samuel Stone wrote our hymn this week, “The Church’s One Foundation,” as a plea for such unity. I won’t go into the historical details. What interests me here is that Stone, following the parables of Jesus, the words of Saint Paul, and the vision of the New Jerusalem that …