From one point of view the American colonies will present a sorry aspect.

Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism, competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks "that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come." No widely extended organization of church discipline in exclusive occupation of any country has ever long avoided the intolerable mischiefs attendant on spiritual despotism.

It was a shock to the hopes and the generous sentiments of those who had looked to see one undivided body of a reformed church erected over against the medieval church, from the corruptions of which they had revolted, when they saw Protestantism go asunder into the several churches of the Lutheran and the Reformed confessions; there are many even now to deplore it as a disastrous set-back to the progress of the kingdom of Christ.

But in the calmness of our long retrospect it is easy for us to recognize that whatever jurisdiction should have been established over an undivided Protestant church would inevitably have proved itself, in no long time, just such a yoke as neither the men of that time nor their fathers had been able to bear.

Fifteen centuries of church history have not been wasted if thereby the Christian people have learned that the pursuit of Christian unity through administrative or corporate or diplomatic union is following the wrong road, and that the one Holy Catholic Church is not the corporation of saints, but their communion.
The new experiment of church life that was initiated in the colonization of America is still in progress.