The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859 by Various
page 237 of 282 (84%)
page 237 of 282 (84%)
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pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is
essentially the same everywhere and always; but the sulphate of iron is never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable; but the _Smithate_ of truth must always differ from the _Brownate_ of truth. The wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in which its knowledge is embodied. The inferior race, the degraded and enslaved people, the small-minded individual, live in the details which to larger minds and more advanced tribes of men reduce themselves to axioms and laws. As races and individual minds must always differ just as sulphates and carbonates do, I cannot see ground for expecting the Broad Church to be founded on any fusion of _intellectual_ beliefs, which of course implies that those who hold the larger number of doctrines as essential shall come down to those who hold the smaller number. These doctrines are to the _negative_ aristocracy what the quarterings of their coats are to the _positive_ orders of nobility. The Broad Church, I think, will never be based on anything that requires the use of _language_. Freemasonry gives an idea of such a church, and a brother is known and cared for in a strange land where no word of his can be understood. The apostle of this church may be a deaf mute carrying a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a foreigner to understand it. I am afraid the only Broad Church possible is one that has its creed in the heart, and not in the head,--that we shall know its members by their fruits, and not by their words. If you say this communion of well-doers is no church, I can only answer, that all _organized_ bodies have their limits of size, and that, when we find a man a hundred feet high and thirty feet broad across the shoulders, we will look out for an organization that shall include all Christendom. |
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