Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/83

III.] from Latin, and both from Protestant, has yet not been wide enough to swallow up the common Christianity which has been transmitted from one to the other. And, in like manner, to recognise the influence of races, institutions, and political convulsions on the history of the Church, is assuredly not to diminish, but to exalt, its importance to men and to nations; not to underrate its mission, but to represent it in its full grandeur. Nothing less than one of the moving springs of the world could be so interwoven with the progress of great events, or in its different manifestations fall in so readily with the broad lines of demarcation which Nature herself has drawn between the various branches of the human family.

And, yet further, the very imperfections and failings of the Church may tend to give us both the failings a more sober and a more hopeful view of its ultimate prospects. The alarms, the dangers, the persecutions, the corruptions through which it has safely passed, are so many guarantees that it is itself indestructible. The fact that these obstructions to Christian truth and goodness are found not in one church only, but in all, instead of causing restlessness and impatience, ought to dispose us to make the best of our lot, whatever it be. We learn that every church partakes of the faults, as well as of the excellencies, of its own age and country,—that each is fallible as human nature itself,—that each is useful as a means, none perfect