Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/91

III] sometimes even the exact opposites, of their ancient, orthodox, scriptural meaning. We need only trace the steps of their gradual descent to their present signification, in order to see how far they, and we with them, have to ascend again before we can reach the point from which they started, the point to which we have still to attain. Read, too, the expressions of the best and wisest Christians in their best and wisest moments. Take them, not in the passion of youth, not in the heat of controversy, not in the idleness of speculation, but in the presence of some great calamity, or in the calmness of age, or in the approach of death. Take that admirable summary of mature Christian experience, which ought to be in the hands of every student of Ecclesiastical History,—one might well add, of every student of theology, of every English minister of religion,—which is contained in Baxter's review of his own narrative of his life and times See how he there corrects the narrowness, the sectarianism, the dogmatism of his youth, by the comprehensive wisdom acquired in long years of persecution, of labour, and devotion. Let us hope that what he has expressed as the result of his individual experience, we may find and appropriate in the collective experience of the old age of the Church.