are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the
particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed.
Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church
exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the
Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge,
and are concentrated on the formation and protection of individual
character; and the individual is then most complete--that is, most a
Christian--when he has practically learned that his life is not his
own, but owed to others--"that no man liveth to himself, and no man
dieth to himself."

Now, spiritual unity respects the sanctity of the individual
conscience. How reverently the Apostle Paul considered its claims,
and how tenderly! When once it became a matter of conscience, this was
his principle laid down in matters of dispute: "Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind." The belief of the whole world cannot make
that thing true to me which to me seems false. The conscience of the
whole world cannot make a thing right to me, if I in my heart believe
it wrong. You may coerce the conscience, you may control men's belief,
and you may produce a unity by so doing; but it is the unity of
pebbles on the sea-shore--a lifeless identity of outward form with no
cohesion between the parts--a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows,
and where the very seaweed dies.

Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character. Out of
eight hundred millions of the human race, a few features diversify
themselves into so many forms of countenance, that scarcely two could
be mistaken for each other. There are no two leaves on the same tree
alike; nor two sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it