Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/278

288 which is in part shall be done away.” Thus, also with the two great Christian churches, they will cease from their disseverance and enmity when they arrive at a deeper comprehension of their oneness in Christ, and of their one common object. In this future, higher, universal church, the eye which turns to God shall no longer find its view circumscribed by barriers of human construction. It will have free range over the treasures of God's revelation, it will freely accept out of the riches of the older as well as of the younger church—those garnered up and those newly-acquired—and from the inexhaustible wealth of the Gospels—every thing which belongs to the perfecting of the order, of the harmony which it beholds—in God. In this church, none will be called heretics or unchristian, who with mind and will labor for the well-being of mankind, according to the will of Christ. Catholics and Unitarians will, whilst they live for the object for which He lived and died, be called his true disciples. This church will not confound the religious science and the religious life. If even the so-called Atheist performed the deeds of the good Samaritan, or had the courage to combat for the truth, he also will hear the words of the Master—

“Thou art not far from the kingdom of God!”

With Christ as example, with His Holy Spirit as teacher, and with the coming of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, as its object, this universal