28o A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



supreme appeal — refusing to believe all that seems contrary to 

 their individual ideas of justice or expediency. This latter is 

 perhaps the more fearful error, as by it the finite utters the awful 

 blasphemy of daring to dictate to the Infinite. 



It is a thought which should be much considered, that Our 

 Lord's last prayer for unity is too often lost sight of. Unity in 

 design, variety in carrying out that design, is the universal law in 

 the natural world ; would that it were more fully recognized in the 

 Christian Church. There are hardly two leaves on any tree 

 exactly similar ; so there are few men of the same mind and tem- 

 perament. All branches of the Church may be described as 

 ranged in a circle, with Christ as their centre ; the nearer they 

 approach Him, the closer they are drawn to one another. 



Certain doctrines, of course, must be insisted on, such as the 

 Trinity, the divinity of the Son of Man and His atonement, 

 salvation in and through Him alone. We must likewise remember 

 the inability of man to make himself acceptable to God, that 

 prayer is the life of the soul, that the Christian life is a conflict, 

 that we are alone able to fight by supernatural aid through the 

 indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and that the sacraments are also 

 divinely appointed means to that end. 



Surely, this is a basis on which all Christians should meet, and 

 the details, though in themselves important, should hold a second 

 place. One man may consider that a service bare of ritual, but 

 from the heart, is more acceptable to God ; another, that ornate 

 ritual, with vestments and incense, is a closer resemblance to the 

 unending worship in heaven, as revealed in the Apocalypse. " Who 

 art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his own master 

 he standeth or falleth." " Let every man be fully persuaded in 

 his own mind." * If every one would exercise more of the divine 

 gift of charity, and were more inclined to acknowledge and appre- 



* Is it not virtually to deny that charity is the greatest of the three theo- 

 logical virtues (i Cor. xiii. 13), when a Church, e.g. the Roman Communion, 

 excommunicates all other branches, calling them heretics, or when Protestants 

 look upon the various Christian Churches as idolatrous and ripening up for 

 fierce judgment, and therefore, while refusing to extend to them the right 

 hand of fellowship, will even prefer anti-Christian religions or sects, such as 

 the Jews or Unitarians? I refer only to the odium theologkum between 

 Churches or sects /'er se, and not to individuals of any denomination. 



