Our island was, till not so long ago, emphatically a land of different, and diverging "churches" and "denominations," unashamed of their separation; nay, boasting their exclusiveness, or their dissidence, commemorating with pride their secessions and disruptions. And even when they began to see something of the evils such tempers and such acts had brought in their train--the wastefulness of them, in regard alike to money, to men's toil, and gifts given by God for the use of the whole Church but confined in their exercise to some small section;--the injury to character, the multiform self-righteousness engendered by our schisms, the breaches of Christian justice and charity;--the treatment of that whole Mediaeval Period to which we owe so much, as if it had been one dark age of heathen blindness;--and, again, the hindrances to Christian work at home and especially abroad,--when uneasiness over these results began to shew itself, the recognition of the evil expressed itself at first in ways hardly indicative of any depth of penitence, or conducive to any practical measures for the healing of the wrong. We had in one quarter "Evangelical Alliances," which put a new stigma on huge portions of the Church of God, yet left those who took part in their meetings contented in their own divisions. In other quarters--probably in both the established Churches of our island--there was a tendency (and more) to look down on Dissenters as such, to ignore even their reasonable grievances, to ask more from them than either Holy Scripture or early tradition could warrant, and to disparage unions that were possible and urgent as likely to put new difficulties in the way of that further and perfect union of all who believe in Christ which alone He has promised, and for which alone He tells us that He prays.