its cry of excommunication. Let us give the Church its due.
Now as no institution exists and claims the unforced homage of men unless it have some real, permanent excellence, in virtue of which alone it holds its place, being hindered, not helped, by the accidental error, falsity, and sin connected therewith; and since the Christian Church has always stood, in spite of its faults, and filled such a place in human affairs as no other institution, it becomes us to look for the Idea it represents, knowing there must be a great truth to stand so long, extend so wide, and uphold so much that is false.
CHAPTER III.
THE FUNDAMENTAL AND DISTINCTIVE IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH—DIVISION OF THE CHRISTIAN SECTS.
All forms of conscious religion have this common point, an acknowledged sense of dependence on God, and each has some special peculiarity of its own, which distinguishes it from all others. Now the essential peculiarity of Christianity is, indeed, that moral and religious character already spoken of;[1] but the formal and theoretic peculiarity, which contradistinguishes it from all other religions, is this doctrine:—That God has made the highest revelation of himself to Man through Jesus of Nazareth. This doctrine—which does not proceed from the absolute character, but from the historical origin of Christianity—is the common ground on which all Christian sects, the Catholic and the Quaker, the Anabaptist, the Rationalist, and the Mormon, are agreed. But as this is logically affirmed by all theoretical Christians, it is as logically denied by all not theoretical Christians. Thus the Jews and Mahometans think their prophets superior to Jesus. When we find a man who is a higher “incarnation of God;” one who teaches
- ↑ Above, Book III. Ch. iii.
