160 CIIURCU UNITY 



other great movement which has to steer its 

 way amid the ignorance, the prejudice, the 

 ecclesiastical antipathies that are common 

 to human nature, to go forward without 

 considerable and frequent discouragements. 

 We have to reckon with conscientious con- 

 victions, however ignorant; we have to 

 reckon with selfish interests, however care- 

 fully disguised ; and most of all, I think, we 

 have to reckon with that quite unconscious 

 pride of infallibility, of which Latin Chris- 

 tianity is not, it is to be feared, the sole 

 and exclusive depositary. " The Reform- 

 ation," says a large-minded thinker of 

 our own generation, 1 "had rid itself of 

 an ecclesiastical falsehood ; it had not yet 

 seen the scholastic root of much of the 

 doctrinal system that it established. It 

 put the idols of its schools in place of the 

 idols of the altar. It had not yet learned 

 that the kingdom of God is not a meta- 

 physical notion; it had not yet learned 

 tolerance of opinions and essential unity 

 among differences. This spirit was the 

 parent of its virtues and vices together. 

 The Lutheran was conservative, intellec- 



1 Dr. Edward A. Washburn, Epochs in Church His- 

 tory, p. 91. 



