Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/74

66 be mere deformities, from a more distant point are lost in the sense of the vast prospect to which each feature contributes its peculiar part. The most cursory view of the various sects and churches of the world will make us suspect that we are not all truth and goodness, nor they all error and vice. The very names of the chiefest among them, Greek and Latin, Galilean, Anglican, German, will shew us how much of the distinction between them must be traced simply to national and geographical influences.

Nor let it be supposed that a philosophical or a general view of Ecclesiastical History is of necessity a cold or contemptuous view. There is, it is true, a melancholy feeling suggested by any wide contemplation of Christendom. We think of the contrast between the story as it might have been and the story as it is. We ask what ought to have been "more noble or more beautiful than the gradual progress of the Spirit of light and love, dispelling the darkness of folly, and subduing into one divine harmony all the jarring elements of evil;" and we have in its place, (if I may use words the more touching from the keenness of regret with which they were uttered,) "no steady, unwavering advance of heavenly spirits, but one continually interrupted, checked, diverted from its course, driven backward; as of men possessed by some bewildering spell, wasting their strength upon imaginary obstacles—hindering each other's progress and their own, by stopping to analyze and dispute