Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/94

110 the formation of congregations, “for a universal priesthood,” in which every individual becomes a self-conscious and self-responsible organ of the vitality of the church. And this is good, very good. But it has also become clear to me at the same time, that its stand-point is higher and more correct, merely in so far as the established church is concerned, and that it has not as yet comprehended, in its deeper sense, the fundamental principle of Protestantism and the future, nay, that it even rejects all questions of a higher knowledge and excludes from the church, much and many things which an actual Universal Church, could not exclude, but would accept and sanctify.

It is not my Free Church, my church of the future. It is too exclusive for that, too stagnant, adheres too much still to the letter. My church, that in which I believe, that which I seek for, that in which I already, in the depth of my soul, live and worship, is one in which certain dogmas and forms would not separate those who are united in the same highest love. My church is that in whose lofty choir Fenelon and Channing, François de Salis and Herman Franke, Hildebrand and Luther, Washington and Vinet, St. Brigitta and Elizabeth Fry, may offer prayer and sing praises together; nay, from the broad temple-courts of which none are excluded who earnestly seek and love the supreme good, be its name Lao-tscu, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, or Spinosa!—Have separate compartments or chapels in the church, if you like; nay, there ought to be dissimilar limbs, as it were, more remote and nearer organs in one great organism, but let it have a Holy of holies, where all united in love to