GENERAL PRINCIPLES 63 



no dealings between them, or a commerce 

 only of insults. Yet that foreigner was 

 recognized as a neighbor. And so, mere 

 nationality cannot limit church member- 

 ship or set bounds to church catholicity. 

 If in the old world geographical barriers 

 and political institutions seemed to make 

 necessary or convenient a German Church, 

 a Dutch Church, a French Church, an 

 English Church, a Scotch Church, yet here 

 in this new world, with all peoples and 

 kindreds and tongues fusing in our blood 

 and mingling in our households, nothing 

 human and Christian can be foreign to us. 

 My fellow church member may be of Euro- 

 pean or American birth, of Roman, Angli- 

 can, or Scottish training; if he has the 

 same Father in Heaven, if he is my kins- 

 man in Christ, then he is my neighbor. 



Who is my neighbor ? Not exclusively 

 one who is near to me in his belief, of the 

 same creed or sect. The Samaritan had 

 been excommunicated as a heretic by the 

 Jew, whose own co-religionists, the priest 

 and the Levite, had already passed him by 

 in sanctimonious conceit and churchly 

 pride. It was that difference of religion, 

 rather than any difference of race or train- 



