Let us own, then,
and reverence the great tradition of the Church; but he has feebly
grasped the idea of Christ leavening the world, and has read little in
the records of pious ages even, who does not know that even in the
Church it is needful to sift truth from falsehood, dead from living
truth.
"If, however, a claim be advanced which forbids such a use of reason as
we make in regard to all other human institutions, viewing them
historically with reference to their constant service to mankind and
their particular adaptation to a changing social state; if, as was the
case with the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, the Church
proclaims a commission not subject to human control, by virtue of which
it would impose creed and ritual, and assumes those great offices,
reserved in Puritan thought to God only,--then does it not usurp the
function of the soul itself, suppress the personal revelation of the
divine by taking from the soul the seals of original sovereignty, remove
God to the first year of our era, relying on his mediate revelation in
time, and thus take from common man the evidence of religion and
therewith its certainty, and in general substitute faith in things for
the vital faith? If the voice of the Church is to find only its own echo
in the inner voice of life, if its evidences of religion involve more
than is near and present to every soul by virtue of its birth, if its
rites have any other reality than that of the heart which expresses
itself in them and so gives them life and significance, then its
authority is external wholly and has nothing in common with that
authority which free men erect over themselves because it is themselves
embodied in an outward principle.
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