Three Ideals. 1 1 3 



" The Church as a whole has never known retrogression 

 or defeat since she first stepped forth from the upper 

 chamber in Jerusalem, conquering and to conquer. The 

 Church's progress is to be estimated not by the number of 

 souls who externally profess belief in her, but by the num- 

 ber who obey her laws in a sufficient degree to obtain 

 their salvation. 



"When the Church, in mounting the throne with 

 Constantine, obtained what in the eyes of the world was a 

 startling triumph, she made no doubt a true and proper 

 step in advance, but one attended with many concomitant 

 disadvantages and dangers. In condescending to allow 

 her sacred monogram to adorn imperial standards, and in 

 permitting kings to sanctify their diadems with the sign of 

 the Cross, gratitude was due from powers so favoured to 

 the Church which granted them, not subservience from 

 the mother and queen to the children she nourished and 

 protected. In the words of the head of the Church in 

 England, * It is not the State which establishes the Church, 

 it is the Church which establishes the State.' 



" The barbaric tribes successively led under the Church's 

 sway were providential agents in bringing about that glori- 

 ous dawn of Church supremacy, the mediaeval theocracy. 

 But unavoidable defects attended that development. Vast 

 numbers of the indifferent, the gross, the merely credulous, 

 and the worldly, were led within the Church's fold by 

 circumstances, accepted its doctrines unhesitatingly but 



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