This, however, need not prevent our working and praying for union. If it
be possible, as much as lieth in us (unless this involves synergistic
heresy), let us cultivate tolerance and live peaceably with all men,
especially with all Lutherans.

We have in this city a great field in which there is work for us all. In
friendly co-operation, rather than in hostile competition, we may escape
some of the perils of our past history and perform with credit the tasks
with which at present we seem to be struggling in vain.

The Metropolitan District includes the urban communities within ten
miles of the boundary line of Greater New York. This territory of a
hundred and fifty square miles now holds a population of over seven
millions of people. Our churches in Greater New York minister to a
baptized membership of 141,642 souls. If we include in our estimates of
parochial responsibility, not merely enrolled members, but the entire
Lutheran population of the District, Russians, Poles, Slovaks,
Bohemians, Hungarians, Letts, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Dutch, Germans,
Swedes, Norwegians, Finns and Danes, to say nothing of the multitudes of
American birth from the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, from Pennsylvania,
Virginia, Ohio and the West, the number of people claiming to be
Lutherans amounts to more than five hundred thousand souls.

To minister as we should to such a constituency, we need co-operation in
place of competition. The work of cultivating effectively such a field
can never be done by churches so hopelessly divided as ours.

Other churches, Protestant and Catholic, with a centralized
ecclesiastical organization, are able to work together as one body and
make plans for their work covering the entire Metropolitan District. We,