Extract from an address by Rev Dr Charles Hodge at the Presbyterian National Union Convention, Philadelphia, November 1867. He was responding to greetings brought by some two hundred Episcopalians, who had also gathered in Philadelphia for a meeting at the same time. His words remind us that, despite denominational differences, all believers are “one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)

Gentlemen and brothers, honored and beloved: I am called upon, as you hear, to represent, in the name of this Convention, their hearty greeting and salutation. You here see around you, sirs, the representatives of six Presbyterian organizations of this country, comprising in the aggregate at least five thousand ministers of Jesus, an equal number of Christian churches, and at least one million of Christians, who have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. It is not only, therefore, as the organ of the Convention, but for the moment, as the mouth-piece of this vast body of ministers and public Christian men, that we, sirs, were commissioned to present to you our cordial and affectionate Christian salutations. We wish to assure you, sirs, that your names are just as familiar to our people as to your own! That we appreciate as highly your services in the cause of our common Master, as the people of your own honored Church. And, sirs, we rejoice with them in all that God has accomplished through your instrumentality. I hope this audience will pardon a reference that might seem too personal under any other circumstances than the present. The honored President of this Convention might easily have selected some more suitable person to be the mouth-piece of this body, but on the ground of one consideration, perhaps the choice of myself to be that organ is not altogether inappropriate. You, Bishop Mcllvaine, and Bishop Johns, whom I had hoped to see with you here today,—you and I, sir, were boys together in Princeton College, fifty odd years ago. Often at evening have we knelt together in prayer. We passed through, sir, the baptism of that wonderful revival in that institution in 1815. We sat together, year after year, side by side, in the same class-room. We were instructed through our theological course by the same venerable teachers. You, sir, have gone your way, and I have gone mine; and I will venture to say in the presence of this audience, that I do not believe you have preached one sermon on any point of doctrine or Christian experience, which I would not have rejoiced to have uttered. And I feel fully confident that I never preached a sermon, the sentiments of which, you would not have publicly and cordially endorsed. And now, sir, after these fifty odd years, here we stand, gray-headed, side by side, for the moment representatives of these two great bodies of organized Christians. Feeling for each other the same intimate cordial love, and mutual confidence; looking not backward,—not downward to the grave beneath our very feet,—but onward to the coming glory. Brethren, pardon this personal allusion, but is there not something that may be regarded as symbolical in this? Has not your Church and our Church been rocked in the same cradle? Did they not pass through the same Red Sea, receiving the same baptism of the Spirit, and of fire? Have they not uttered from those days of the Reformation to the present time, the same great testimony for Christ and his Gospel? What difference, sir, is there between your Thirty-nine Articles, and our Confession of Faith, other than the difference between one part and another of the same great Cathedral anthem rising to the skies? Does it not seem to indicate, sir, that these Churches are coming together? We stand here, sir, to say to the whole world, that we are one in faith, one in baptism, one in life, and one in our allegiance to your Lord and to our Lord”.