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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859 by Various
page 237 of 282 (84%)
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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