"But may it not be pleaded that, however slight by comparison personal
life may seem, yet if it be true, the Church must include this in its
own mighty sum; and that what the Church adds to define, expand, and
elevate, to guide and support, belongs to growth in spiritual things,
not to those beginnings which only are here spoken of? And in defence of
a private view and hesitancy, such as is also felt in the organized
social life elsewhere, may it not be suggested that the past of
Christendom, great as it is in mental force, moral ardour, and spiritual
insight, and illustrious with triumphs over evil in man and in society,
and shining always with the leading of a great light, is yet a human
past, an imperfect stage of progress at every era? Is its historic life,
with all its accumulation of creed and custom, not a process of
Christianization, in which much has been sloughed off at every new birth
of the world? In reading the Fathers we come on states of mind and forms
of emotion due to transitory influences and surroundings; and in the
history of the Church, we come upon dogmas, ceremonials, methods of work
and aims of effort, which were of contemporary validity only.
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