Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/85

III] best illustration, of the parables which unfold the course of the kingdom of heaven. The failures of the Church are but the reflex of the mournful, almost pensive shade, cast before on the first anticipations of its history—(how unlike the triumphant exultations of so many human founders of human sects),—"not peace, but a sword;" "a fire kindled on the earth;" "a savour of death unto death."

The actual effects, the manifold applications, in history, of the words of Scripture, give them a new instruction, and afford a new proof of their endless vigour and vitality. Look through any famous passage of the Old, or yet more of the New Testament—There is hardly one that has not borne fruit in the conversion of some great saint, or in the turn it has given to some great event. At a single precept of the Gospels, Antony went his way and sold all that he had; at a single warning of the Epistles, Augustine's hard heart was melted beneath the fig-tree at Milan; a single chapter of Isaiah made a penitent believer of the profligate Rochester. A word to St. Peter has become the stronghold of the Papacy; a word from St. Paul has become the stronghold of Luther. The whole Christian Church is paved with Scripture texts, rightly or wrongly applied, deeply worn by the footsteps of thousands of worshippers. The Psalter alone, by its manifold applications and uses in after times, is a vast palimpsest, written over and over again, illuminated, illustrated by every conceivable incident and emotion of men and of nations;