Theological Essays/XV

"SUPPOSING those facts which you dwelt upon in your last Essay do imply the presence of Him whom our Lord calls the Comforter, the great difficulty for those who compare the promises of the New Testament with the history of Christendom still remains. The Apostles speak, or have always been supposed to speak, of a Church, a one Catholic Church, as established, or about to be established, on this earth. They connect that Church with the gift of a spirit, who is called the Holy Spirit, who, it was said, should dwell in the Church as He did not in the world,—who was to purify the hearts of its members. Where is this Church? What does History say of it? What do our eyes tell us about it? Answer these questions, or the deepest anxieties of our age are still unsatisfied."

I feel the truth of these remarks. The subject which I discussed in the last Essay approaches so closely to this, that I could not always avoid allusion to it. But I passed it by as much as I could; the words of our Lord on which I commented enabled me to do so. They speak of a World, not of a Church. ​They speak of the Comforter as convicting the world of Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgment,—not of Him as a Sanctifier or Reconciler. I desired to follow His guidance; but I did not wish to shrink from the other examination, however appalling it may seem. I allow that there is a very distinct obligation laid upon us all to explain what we understand by the language of Scripture respecting the gift of the Spirit and the foundation of the Church, and how we suppose the records of the world, and the world which we see, can be explained in accordance with it.

I cannot make this task easier to myself by maintaining that the New Testament promises certain spiritual blessings to individuals, but that it does not connect the gift of the Spirit with a Society. Every passage in the Bible—the construction of the Bible—refutes that supposition. The earlier records speak of a nation called out by God to be the witness of His presence and government; the later records have no connection with these, have no distinct meaning of their own, if they do not describe the expansion of a national Society into a human and universal Society. The expectations of the Apostles, awakened and sustained by their Lord's teachings, pointed to this issue:—they were to be the ministers of a kingdom; they were to preach of a kingdom of Israelites; finally, they were to baptize all nations. They were told they had not yet power to fulfil that work. They knew that they had not. They had a mysterious assurance that they were united still to the Lord who had been with them on earth; they felt they might call upon His Father as their Father. But they could not realise their relation to that invisible world into which their Master had entered-entered, He said, for them. He ​had chosen them as a body to work under Him. He had told them that they were to work together after He had gone away. He had said that all men would know they were His disciples by the love they had to each other. But they were conscious of jealousies and rivalries; each might soon again be trying to live and act for himself. Unless their Lord could bind them together by that power which bound Him to them, fellowship among such naturally unsociable elements was impossible. And surely such a power was needed if they were ever to break through the fetters of their Jewish exclusiveness—to have any communion with men of other kindreds and tongues. The events said to have occurred on the day of Pentecost exactly corresponded to these anticipations. A power is said to have taken possession of them,—a power which governed their thought and speech. But it was the power of a Spirit who made them feel they were one, and proclaim their oneness with the crowd which was assembled at that feast, because He who established it, and whose mighty works were commemorated in it, was declaring them to be one with Him. The story follows of the baptism of the three thousand, who were to receive the same gift as the Apostles had received, and of the New Society at Jerusalem,—which is not noted for the exercise of the gift of tongues, but for the continuance of its members in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, for the joy and singleness of heart with which they ate their bread, for their not counting the things they had as their own, for the distribution which they made to those who had need, for their courage before the Sanhedrim, for the confidence with which they prayed that they might speak with all boldness of the King against whom Jews and Gentiles had gathered together.

​The Apostles do indeed exercise powers of healing, and they are especially careful to assert that no cure was wrought in their own name, but in the name of the ascended Son of God. But what the historian chiefly dwells on is the order of the Society which was established in that name, its unity and holiness while it confessed the Spirit to be with it,—the punishment of those (for there were such in that infant community) who lied against the Holy Ghost,—the new organisation which was suggested by the quarrels (for there were those in that infant community) between Hebrews and Hellenists.

When St. Paul goes with his Gospel into the cities of Asia Minor, of Macedonia, of Greece Proper, it is still to form Societies. Each of these is named an Ecclesia; the members of it are said to be called, or chosen, or to be in God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. They are said to be baptized by one Spirit into one body. These distinct bodies are portions of a universal body.

Everything, then, in the Old and New Testaments, speaks of fellowship and organisation. And to suppose that the latest birth in the universe so solemnly announced, so long waited for, was an abortion, or that the child was not to come to the use of its limbs and vital energies for centuries, is to suppose the Apostles at once deceived and deceivers. They told their disciples, as their Lord had told them, that a crisis to be witnessed by some of them would show that a kingdom had come forth, which, however apparently insignificant, was instinct with a Spirit that would enable it to rule the nations.

Admitting this, how can I dare to face the problems which the world, as we see it, presents to us? Must ​I not save the credit of Inspiration by resorting to fictions which have not done men much good hitherto, and which will certainly not save them now? By assuming, for instance, that forms and professions constitute a Church,—that external badges mean the same thing as an indwelling Spirit? I hope I shall be preserved from any such wicked trifling; if I fall into it, the falsehood will soon make itself evident.

I. First, then, we find a body which affirms itself to be the one Holy Catholic Church of the world. Its members form the bulk of the population of Western Europe, its claims to be what it represents itself to be are publicly recognised by many of the most conspicuous and civilised states. This body boasts that it is the heir of that which was established in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost; whatever rights and powers resided in that Church, it says, have descended upon it. If that Church was able to do wonderful works, this Church declares that it can do the same. The gift, it says, has never been withdrawn, has been exercised at intervals in all generations, makes itself manifest now. This sign of continuance and identity it is inclined to dwell upon most; still, others are not wanting. "There has been no break," it declares, in the line of Church ministers, from the time of the Apostles downwards. The character of the organisation is the same. The Apostles were regarded as the fathers of a family; the idea of paternity has been strictly preserved; it has even unfolded itself; it is more completely realised now than it was at first. The capital of the Church, it is admitted, has been changed; but that change came to pass, first, by a divine ordinance expressly depriving Jerusalem of its honour; secondly, by a series of events,—equally attesting the ​divine purpose,—which have deposed the old Cæsars from their seat, and have established the successors of St. Peter upon it. And this circumstance has, it is said, produced a unity which would otherwise have been wanting to Christendom. The wild Gothic tribes, full of their separate strifes, impatient of fellowship, have been brought to confess a general spiritual head, and a community of faith higher than any differences of race or any national disagreements. In defiance of the tendencies of each nation to find a separate language for itself, a common language has established itself as an organ of devotion. of devotion. In defiance, again, of the tendency of each nation to set up for itself a separate worship,—a tendency equally evident in the Old World and the New,—a common creed and a common worship have succeeded in keeping their ground for many centuries, the head of the Society being always able to interpret what has been misunderstood, to put down the inventors of new opinions, to provide for fresh emergencies. For, there being such a person, whose authority all the different members of this Society acknowledge as infallible and past appeal, the Church, it is said, " can combine the greatest fixedness with the greatest elasticity. It has maintained the faith once delivered to the saints without wavering; it has ever been giving birth to new opinions and practices, where they were needful to develop and complete the old,—to new orders of men when it was requisite to encounter diseases or necessities in the body politic, that had previously not existed or not been observed.

"This Church," it is further declared, "is not only spread over the whole surface of modern European society; not only are its priests to be seen at the corners of every street; not only are they performing ​services continually in every Church which establish a communion between angels and men, the living and the departed; not only is the Sacrifice continually offered up which reconciles the offending creatures to their Creator, and brings down blessings on the earth; not only is that Sacrifice lifted before the eyes of men, that they may believe and adore;—but the influence of the Church affects the politics of all kingdoms, penetrates into the recesses of all families. Every individual is within the reach of its guidance and blessing. Every burdened conscience knows where it may go that it may lay down its burden,—who can set it free. Nothing in the arrangements of this Society," it is said, "is merely distant and abstract; it meets each peculiar case, provides a remedy for every ailment, a satisfaction for every craving. And it proves,"—so its champions triumphantly continue,—"its title to be the one Catholic Church, since all who rebel against it or separate from it necessarily become divided, since no body besides it can put forth the least pretension to universality. And it proves itself to be holy, because no other can show such an array of devoted, self-sacrificing saints."

It is at this point, I suspect, that the ordinary observer, the simple layman, the European traveller,—for it is to such a man, and not to some adverse divine, that these statements are likely to be addressed,—will step in with an objection. "All your arguments," he will answer, "may be true enough; at all events, I cannot refute them. You may have the miraculous powers you speak of, the uninterrupted descent, the infallible authority, the fixed dogmas, the adaptation to circumstances, the band of saints. But when you talk of a holy society, do tell me what your words mean, for they utterly bewilder me. Do you call this society, ​in which I am dwelling, a holy society? Do you call this country, for instance, which is nearest the centre of holiness, a holy country? I will not press you too much. I will suppose that though you have miraculous powers, the power does not always exert itself in this way. That it can make statues wink more easily than it can make human beings abandon their habits of revenge or lying,—I can understand. But when the power is exerted, when you are doing a work for men, I want to know whether that is for good or for ill? I cannot make up my mind that it is for good. I cannot help perceiving, not that you do not reclaim men from being false, but that you continually make them false; not that you sometimes fail in preventing moral corruption, but that you are working very hard, by some of your most potent and most vaunted agencies, to promote it; not that evil and debasing habits have defied all the energies of preachers, confessors, and absolvers; but that preachers, confessors, and ab- solvers are very often helping more to strengthen these habits, and make them invincible, than all other men together."

This kind of conviction,—Romanists should understand it, and we for our humiliation should understand it too,—is doing immeasurably more to make their arguments fall lifeless upon practical men, whose minds are not blinded to the distinction of right and wrong, than all our elaborate reasonings. And when a man has gone so far in his examination of the phrase, "One Holy Catholic Church," his observation, without any help from divinity, or much from ecclesiastical history, may carry him a little farther. He may demur to a unity which is compatible with the infinite contrarieties, not diversities, of belief, which he will ​himself have met with in Roman Catholic countries; with the wild, immoral, heathenish superstitions which an intelligent priest will at once disclaim, yet which exist in the very classes that most acknowledge the influence of priests; with the contemptuous infidelity which they themselves impute to the classes that are out of their reach; with the discontent that is muttered by better men. All this,—with the modifications of faith which exist in the sacerdotal order itself, touching all points from the most unquestioning orthodoxy to absolute atheism,—may co-exist, no doubt, with something that is called unity; nay, these differences may be alleged as proofs how vigorous the system must be which can enforce a uniformity in spite of them. But they may somewhat puzzle a person who is inquiring whether this is that Church which began when a Spirit of unity took possession of a body of men, allowing them to retain their external differences, because they had that within which made them one. And a similar difficulty will beset him when he considers that the symbol of the descent of that Spirit was, that men could hear, in their different tongues, the wonderful works of God, and when he observes that the one tongue which is the symbol of modern Catholicism is a sentence of exclusion to the whole body of Greeks, seeing that they boast of a somewhat older and more sacred dialect. And generally it will strike him, I fancy, that the boasts of Romanists themselves establish the inference which he would have deduced from his own experience, that the preservation of a vast machinery, of a surface uniformity, of an artificial holiness, is what they understand by the preservation of a Church in which the Holy Spirit of Unity has made His habitation.

​II. An impartial observer who has arrived at this mournful conclusion may turn, with some pleasure, to another class of facts which the modern European world offers to him. He may hear with satisfaction that several nations have raised their protest against the attempt to crush all distinct thoughts and languages under one general name. He will rejoice to find that their rulers are considered responsible to God for their conduct to their subjects and to other lands, and to no earthly superior, whatever claims of infallibility or divinity he may allege. He may find that in such countries there is a recognition of the dignity of civil life, of the duty of nations to maintain their independence, of the inviolability of the domestic hearth, of the worth which belongs to the ordinary virtues of plain dealing and truth-speaking, which he has sought for in vain among those who only breathe a sacerdotal atmosphere. He may be pleased to observe that, nevertheless, in these countries there is an acknowledgment of the importance and necessity of a spiritual influence; that the priest, though he cannot claim to be a king, has his own recognised and lawful position.

At first such discoveries may be very cheering; possibly they will not cease to be so. But he will soon hear, not only from Romanists, not only from those who suppose that the Romanist is somewhere near the truth in his conception of the Church, but also from those who regard him as hopelessly and fatally astray, that these protesting nations are altogether unspiritual and secular. These hard names will not be bestowed without some startling evidence to show that they are deserved. "Look," he will be told, "at the lower classes in these nations. They ​may be less flagrantly superstitious than those in Romish countries. Are they less debased, less animal, less ignorant? What spiritual influence has been exerted over them?" "Look," it will be said again, "at the upper classes. The priests are less obnoxious to them than the Romish priests are to those among whom they dwell. Is not this because it is more clearly understood that they shall be left to themselves, that their vices and their wrong-doings to those who are under their influence shall not be noticed; that the priest shall abdicate his functions as a spiritual reprover, and shall be content to be reckoned a safety-valve of the social machine, or as some insignificant accessory to it, which no one will disturb until it begins to move? Certain doctrines he is to believe, certain words he is to repeat, certain acts he is to go through; what have those doctrines, words, acts, to do with men not of his profession;—often, what have they to do with him? They are charms to keep the different classes of a country in those positions to each other which the laws and conventions of the land have assigned them. And whither," it is asked, "are these nations tending? Are not material gratifications becoming more and more the only prizes which they are setting before themselves? Is not the pursuit of wealth the one great means of winning that prize? Are not art, science, religion, valued just so far as they contribute to make the possession of money more agreeable, or the search for it more secure? Is it here that we are to look for a Holy Catholic Church? Can we find tokens here that a Spirit of Holiness and Love is dwelling among men?"

What use can there be in shutting one's ears to such words as these? Is it not better to take in the ​full force of them, and to meditate on them silently? For so we may in due time discover, not the secret of acquiescence in the evils which press upon us, but the secret of deliverance from them. Those who are flying to Rome expect that a miraculous illumination will some day enable them to see the anomalies which now shock them in its system quite differently. It is probable that a blindness (which may be also miraculous) will by degrees save them from the unhappiness of seeing these anomalies at all. We should wish and pray, in proportion as we love our country, that we may not shrink from contemplating one of its sins which are our own, but that God's light may show them to us just as they are.

III. Perhaps the student may find some relief in turning from both these spectacles to a number of particular societies which declare that the so-called catholic body, and the bodies which pretend to be National Churches, have equally mistaken the foundation on which a Church ought to rest. He must needs be attracted by their statements, not only because they point out evils which he has himself noticed in their opponents, but because they affirm that the true spiritual principle is with them. "The Church," they say, cannot be a mere world. It must be a body of men chosen out of the world. It cannot be a body merely held together by certain external professions. It must consist of those who are drawn by a Divine Spirit to confess a Divine Lord." What data can sound more hopeful than these? How likely it seems that here at last the feet of weary pilgrims will find some resting-place; that here we have arrived at the secret which has escaped anxious and earnest men for so many generations! There is much in the early history of ​all sects to favour this opinion. Who can deny the fervent zeal against injustice and evil which possessed the leaders; the hearty affection, genial sympathy, passionate self-devotion of the followers? Who can say that they were only denouncing other men, and not uttering the deepest conviction of their own hearts? If they were sometimes unjust and violent, their fierce language was often the indication of a loving rather than of a hating spirit; a wise man who was the object of it would have liked it much better than the smooth and civil speeches of less cordial foes. A Spirit—yes, the Spirit of Truth—there must have been among these men; their sect would not have survived them for a century, or even a year, if it had been merely gathered for a purpose of spite or faction.

A person who has arrived at this conviction will not be driven from it by any criticisms or denunciations of those who oppose these sects. But what if he should hear deep groans arising from the midst of them, from the very persons who have been educated in them, from those who have learnt to despise, and have continued to despise, the bodies whence they have gone out? What if the complaints of them should be of this kind,-that they are not spiritual bodies at all, but formal and worldly; not assertors of moral freedom, but great restrainers of it; that they are bitter against each other, seldom at peace within; that the best praise which can be bestowed upon the best man in any one of these bodies,—the praise which his admirers always dwell upon,—is that he has emancipated himself from the ordinary habits and temper of it? Such is the testimony, not of hard judges, but of sufferers. And if so, can we find among these sects the resemblance of that Church of which ​St. Paul spoke as being one Body, into which all had been baptized by one Spirit?

But if no one of these separate inquiries has led to any satisfactory result, how much more unsatisfactory would the comparison of them seem to be! What an impression that must leave upon every mind of conflict, strife, contradiction, in those who bear the name of the one Lord! What utter despair it must awaken in him of all Unity, unless, indeed, men can agree that they are not spiritual beings; that they are not connected with an invisible world at all; that they are not children of a Father in Heaven; that they have no ties to each other except such as are produced by outward animal necessities, which one man cannot satisfy without the assistance of his neighbour. Were it possible to arrive at that state of feeling, some difficulties might, no doubt, be removed. But does experience show that it is possible? Would perfect unity or unbroken discord,—a war of elements, without the hope or chance of peace,—be the consequence, if it were?

To one revolving that frightful possibility, and asking whether there must not be some way out of this labyrinth, the thought, I am sure, will at last present itself, that those facts which he has been pondering offer the most decisive witness for, not against, the law which was proclaimed on the day of Pentecost; for, not against, the assertion that it is the law of human Society,—the one by which Society is governed,—however much men may be denying it or rebelling against it. Look once again at that Church which boasts to be One, Holy, Catholic. Is her boast too grand a one? Has she believed too firmly that a Church has been established of which all her sons ​have a right to call themselves members, that a Spirit has been given of which they all have a right to be partakers? Would to God she did hold that belief! What a different picture her history would present if she had held it steadfastly! If she had been convinced that Heaven and Earth were brought into one,—that a real fellowship exists and has been manifested between them,—what a mass of contrivances to produce that fellowship, to fill up the chasm between the visible and the invisible world, would be swept away! What portentous superstitions, what dark idolatries, would vanish if once that faith,—not the faith of her enemies, but her own,—was really accepted, honestly carried out!

I pressed this point in my Essay on Regeneration; but I could not then speak of the faith which the Romish Church professes to have in an indwelling Spirit, a Spirit of truth, and love, and power, which is to bind all together in one, and enable her to rule the nations. I could not then point out what the contradiction was between this profession and her adoption of those practices of the conjuror which the miracles of the Gospel were intended to explode; of the practices of the diplomatist, from which she ought to have delivered the nations, instead of setting the vilest example of them; of the practices of the hard-hearted worldly oppressor, crushing the spirit under the flesh, the conscience under casuistry, the reason under decrees, when she was sent to teach men of a Father who had claimed them as His sons, of a Son who was at His right hand for them, of a Spirit who was within them to make them inheritors of His glory. I could not then show how great the sin was which she had committed in assuming that St. Peter, or any successor ​of his, could be the Father of the Church, how necessarily such a fiction divides earth from Heaven, and makes the Church into a world.

Like the Angelo of our great dramatist, the deputy of a true ruler has played his tyrannical and hypocritical tricks, punishing others for the crimes which he commits himself, often betraying the innocence which he is commissioned to protect. But, as that same story teaches us, the Duke is not really absent from his government, but is watching, counteracting, bringing to an altogether different issue, the plots of his agent. See how the Papal history in its most palmy moment bears witness of that fact. The policy of Innocent III was so mysterious and so perfect that a modern German historian, through admiration of it, is said to have abandoned the faith of his childhood. "What but a divine power," he and others have argued, "could have enabled a man to rule the world as Innocent did; to guide at the same moment the Latin kingdom in Greece, which he did not assist in establishing, but which he knew so well how to use when it was established; to nurse a young monarch for Germany, who might hereafter make the Empire the tool of the Papacy; to set his foot on the prostrate monarch of England?" A wonderful spectacle, assuredly; but there is another as well worthy of our study. Is it not as clear an evidence of a divine government in the world that all these exquisite plots came to nothing; that the reviving energies of Greece so soon shattered the Latin kingdom in pieces; that Frederic II became, not the instrument of Popes, but their most hated enemy and scourge; that Stephen Langton, forced into his See by interdicts and excommunications, became the assertor of English independ​ence, the punisher of the monarch who betrayed his trust, the author of the Charter? Is it not as great a proof of a spiritual power in the world, that the feeble Francis of Assisi, by the one thought that Christ is the friend of the poor, did so much more to preserve and extend the Church,—even to support the Papacy itself, than the hundred-handed Pope, with all his resources of outward strength and unrivalled craft? Is it nothing that Louis IX, because he was a faithful national sovereign who loved justice, was felt to be such a saint as no Pope had ever been?

Thus, then, every oppression and crime that has been rightly imputed to Rome has arisen from her not confessing in deed, as she has confessed in words, that a Spirit has appeared to build up a one Holy Catholic Church. Every healthful influence she has ever exercised,—or Christian men and women have ever exercised in her name,—has proceeded from that belief.

And may not all the sins which, with no less truth, have been imputed to Protestant National Churches, be traced to the same unbelief,—all that has been good to the same faith? Have they erred from their too great patriotism, their too zealous determination not to give it up for emperor or pope, for man or devil; from their fixed purpose that no religion whatever should rob them of their common morality, or persuade them to do evil for the sake of pleasing God? No; but they have erred in not thinking that the Spirit of God was with them, to enable them to maintain their national steadfastness, to fulfil their common duties, to support their love of truth against the temptations which are continually overpowering it; to purify their patriotism of exclusiveness, their zeal for the plain and the practical of sordidness; to enable them to feel ​that all citizens of the same commonwealth, however different their ranks and civil positions, are, in the highest sense, equal; to give them the freedom, the manliness, the sympathy with those of other races, which selfishness is taking from them.

And why have those sects I spoke of become so partial, so hard, so cruel? Is it because their forefathers were wrong in telling them that the Spirit was seeking to bind them in one, and that no mere external bond could bind them? Surely not: this lesson taken home to the heart, makes men first true, in due time Catholic, leading them to cling mightily to the special conviction God has wrought in them, afterwards enabling them to feel the necessity of other convictions to sustain that. It is the loss of this faith, it is the substitution of some petty external badge and symbol of theirs, for the belief and confession of a Divine Spirit, which is making them impatient of dogmas, yet fiercely dogmatic; eager to rob other men of their treasures; feeble in their hold upon their own. It is this which tempts their sons to ask whether the earth has no other foundations than those which the sects have laid, often to arrive at the miserable conclusion that its foundations are built on rottenness.

But it is not so, however much excuse they may have for suspecting it. There has no promise of Scripture been proved nugatory; there is none which has not been fulfilled more than men dreamed of, which will not be fulfilled to the very letter. I have said there were liars and murmurers in the Church at Jerusalem. The promise was not that there should not be these in the time to come. Every form of corruption and heresy was discovered by St. Paul in the Churches to which he wrote. There was no pledge given that ​these should not appear in the later time. St. John said there were many Antichrists in his day. It is no stumbling-block to our faith if there are many in ours. But it would be the utter uprooting of our faith if we found that there was no such body as the Apostles told us there should be, with which all lying and contention should be at war,—if there was no Spirit dwelling in that body against which these heresies and corruptions and Antichrists are fighting, and which will at last prevail against them. Romanists, Protestant nations, all sects, declare that there is such a body, and that there is such a Spirit. Their words bear witness of it; their crimes, which outrage those words, bear witness of it still more.

And thus we are enabled to understand better than by all artificial definitions how a Church differs from a world. "The Comforter," our Lord says, "shall convince the world." When He speaks to the disciples, He says, "He shall come and dwell in you." The world contains the elements of which the Church is composed. In the Church these elements are penetrated by a uniting, reconciling power. The Church is, therefore, human society in its normal state; the World, that same society irregular and abnormal. The world is the Church without God; the Church is the world restored to its relation with God, taken back by Him into the state for which He created it. Deprive the Church of its Centre, and you make it into a world. If you give it a false Centre, as the Romanists have done, still preserving the sacraments, forms, creeds, which speak of the true Centre, there necessarily comes out that grotesque hybrid which we witness, a world assuming all the dignity and authority of a Church,—a Church practising all the worst fictions of a world; ​the world assuming to be heavenly,—a Church confessing itself to be of the earth, earthly.

From this contradiction a number of others proceed: I will take one which will serve as the specimen of a whole class. The doctrine, Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam, sounds the cruellest of all doctrines; it has become so in fact. But consider the origin of it. A man possessed with the conviction that human beings are not meant to live in a world where every one is divided from his neighbour,—in which there is no uniting, fusing principle, in which each lives to himself, and for himself,—bids them fly from that chaos. For he cries, "There is a universe for you! Nay, more, there is a Father's house open to you. God is not the frowning, distant tyrant the world takes Him to be; not split up into a multitude of broken forms and images; not One to whom we are to offer a cold civil lip-service, by way of conciliating Him or doing Him honour. He is the Head of a family; His Son has proved you to be members of it; His Spirit is given you that you may know Him as He is, not as your hard material hearts represent Him to you. Come into this Ark! Take up your place in this Family! Here is deliverance and health! Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam. No comfort, no health, no peace, while you count yourselves exiles from God, strangers to your brethren."

Is this a hard saying? Is it not full of gentleness, benignity, love? But the Church becomes a world-Church; a Church that speaks of a Father in Heaven, and sets up a Father on earth; that introduces earthly mediators because the Mediator has gone away, and it is needful to make Him propitious; that boasts itself to be endued with a Spirit of truth, and ​can only exhibit the powers of the Spirit in doing untrue acts: then the phrase necessarily assumes, not a different meaning from this, but one that is directly opposite to it. "Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam! God is ready to destroy you. We can save you from Him. Think what a risk you are incurring. You may be wrong! Then perdition is certain." Oh, doctrine of devils, if such is to be found in earth or in hell! Surely, Salvation and Damnation become identical, if the soul is saved by the loss of its trust in God, by conceiving Him to be like those demons from whom the Apostles said that Christ came to deliver mankind, as unlike as possible to the perfect image which was shown forth in Him!

We cannot, however, cast stones at the Romanists for adopting this notion of safety. We have fallen into it almost as much as they have. It belongs especially to our money-getting habits. If some wander from our Church to Rome, because they believe that, on the whole, they have a better chance of escaping destruction there, we have ourselves to blame; we have sown the wind of selfishness, and we must reap the whirlwind of desertion. But it would be a great mistake and injustice to suppose that the selfish motive is the exclusive one, even in the worst cases, or the predominant one in any better men. better men. Love and Selfishness are strangely, inextricably blended. The true idea of Safety is mixed with its accursed counterfeit. They long for a larger fellowship, a Father's house, a Spirit who can make them brothers with all men—Greeks, Romanists, Protestants. The wish may be shrivelled and contracted by a thousand causes; but it is there; and if we cannot gratify it, if we cannot tell them that they are inheritors of Christ's kingdom in earth ​and heaven, and that the spirit of the Father and Son is with them,—in order that the inheritance may not be a nominal, but a real one,—we shall not keep them, we ought not to keep them. They will try whether that blessing which our creeds and prayers assure them is theirs, can be obtained elsewhere; and if they meet with bitter disappointment, or take up with a wretched substitute for the infinite good which God has taught them to feel necessary, is not our unbelief the cause? And is not the only way of preserving our National Church, to declare solemnly, habitually, perseveringly, that it does bear this witness not for itself alone, but on behalf of the Romanist and the Protestant Sectarian? yes! that it is ready to make any sacrifices if it can but bear that witness effectually?

I do not, indeed, say that this witness must come from us alone, perhaps not from us chiefly. Let it come from where it will, God must be the author of it. He may see fit to bring this truth with mighty power to the heart of some Italian monk, who has been seeking in vain to make himself holy, and discovers that holiness must come from a Spirit of Holiness, who is also a Spirit of Unity. It may come to some Romish Bishop as he listens to the Veni Creator Spiritus, and believes that the sevenfold gifts are intended for him. It may come to some earnest member of a Protestant sect, feeling that the Spirit of Truth cannot be the Spirit of narrowness. It may come to some man lying outside of all churches and sects, and asking whether he can be intended to be only a part of an unsympathising, forlorn world. To whichever it comes first, the faith will pass rapidly, as by an electrical chain, from one to another. It will break through all barriers of opinion and circumstance. None will ​know how he has received it, because all will have received it from that Spirit who bloweth where He listeth, and of whom you cannot say whence He cometh or whither He goeth.

But, seeing that what appear to us the most irregular currents obey a fixed and eternal law, we may be sure that that Spirit will work as He has always worked; that He will change nothing, and yet will make all things new. That mighty wonder which we behold every year when the self-same roots and stems, which were the symbols of all that is hard and dry and separate, become clothed with verdure, full of life and joy and music, will be exhibited in the moral world. No form will be cast away, no ordinance will be treated as worthless, nothing which has expressed the thought or belief of any man will be found unmeaning, because the Spirit of the living God will call forth every sleeping and latent power into activity, everything that has been dead into life, all that has been divided into harmony. Only the miserable counterfeits will pass away. Whatever has been true, if it has been ever so weak and broken, will find its place in that creation which God has declared to be very good.

But have I not spoken again and again in this Essay of a Father, a Son, and a Spirit? Has not all my comfort in the past, my hope for the future, been connected with the revelation of that Name, with the full acknowledgment of it? Even so, my Unitarian brother. And all the longings you have for fellowship and freedom and unity, for the breaking down of barriers, for a universal comprehension, point the same way. I have not deceived you by pretending to agree with you where I cannot. I am more entirely at issue ​with you in your denials than those who denounce you most. I have come now to the root of all your denials, to that Name which I believe to be the ground of human life and of human society. If you have borne with me so far,—considering many of my words, no doubt enthusiastical, antiquated, obscure, foolish, yet still I hope now and then detecting a sense in them which answers to a sense in you,—will you listen while I tell you why I could not believe that a Trinity in Unity is a foundation for myself to rest upon, if I did not also regard it as a foundation for you and for all men?