"LA UNION FAIT LA FORCE"

The formation of a new University Theological School in the merging of the Andover Theological Seminary and the Harvard Divinity School, announced today, finally fills a gap that threatened at one time in the last century to divide the University. In the lapse of years since then the two have worked harmoniously side by side; but it has become more and more evident, particularly since the crucible of the war, that a greater strength and usefulness could best be attained by a fusion.

Protestantism has always been known for a tendency towards division; it has been the great religion of individualism and freedom as opposed to the unifying force of Catholicism. If this is true of Protestantism in general, small-town New England has been one of its hardest fought battle-grounds. Typical of the spirit is the story of the travelling salesman a generation ago who stopped in a Cape Cod village to pass the time of day with a customer, deacon of one of the four village churches, and asked casually about its welfare. "Well," replied the deacon, "we're three hunderd in debt. But," he added cheerfully, "the others is worse!"

This attitude, if representative of a phase of the nineteenth century, has in large measure been shattered in the twentieth. Progressive leaders of the clergy, among them the new dean, Dr. Sperry, have come to feel the need for union in place of dissension. The fostering of a spirit of enlightened non-sectarianism is the most hopeful sign of a new Protestantism which will meet the individualism of today and still rest upon a broad, deep-rooted foundation.