Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/84

76 as an end. To find Christ or Antichrist exclusively in any one community is against charity and against humility, but above all, against the plain facts of history. Let us hold this firmly, and we shall have then secured ourselves against two of the worst evils which infest the well-being of religious communities—the love of controversy and the love of proselytizing.

Every such reflection forces us back on a consideration which is both a chief safeguard and a chief advantage of Ecclesiastical History—the comparison which it suggests between what the Church is, and what in the Scriptures it was intended to be; between what it has been, and what from the same source we trust that it may be.

It is hard to say whether, by such a comparison, the study of the Bible or the study of Ecclesiastical History is most the gainer.

What is the history of the Church but a long commentary on the sacred records of its first beginnings? It is a fulfilment of Prophecy in the truest and widest sense of that word; a fulfilment, not merely of predictions of future events, but of that higher and deeper spirit of Prophecy which "makes manifest the secrets of the heart." The thoughts and deeds of good Christians are still, as in the Apostolic times, a living Bible; "an Epistle," a Gospel, "written on the hearts of men, known and read of all men." The various fortunes of the Church are the best explanation, as they are the