with the law and revelation of God, their church became so delimited in their own conception of it that it was not extensive enough to embrace Christ and His apostles, or to comprehend, or include, their teaching, and they accused Him of being a heretic and crucified Him, and persecuted and killed, as they could, His followers.

This was the charge made by the continental and English reformers against the Church of Rome. It was pointed out that, by her decrees and superadded doctrines and ceremonies, Rome had made the Church more and more intensive; that is, its notes, and distinctive attributes had been increased. It was doubtless reasoned that these notes would enrich the life of the Church and increase its power. It was doubtless reasoned, also, that each new doctrine added could either be proven from the teaching of the Scriptures and the ancient Fathers, or else it was logically reasoned that their authority, as universally binding, rested upon the logically proven right of infallible popes and infallible councils to decree dogmas to be held

essential, which to deny would be heresy, and which to repudiate would be schism.

The Church failed to foresee that the thought of subsequent generations might not be of a nature to be included within the reach of the Church whose extensive catholicity was gradually being delimited by each superadded dogma, established as true, or judged expedient, by the logical working of the ecclesiastic mind. failed to perceive that the liberated mind would be more extensive than the Church, which they were making by each dogma more intensive, and thus less and less extensive in its scope and inclusive capacity. The time, however, came when others saw it.

It

CHAPTER X

THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE SYLLOGISM

HE syllogism, as it represents the reason

THE

ing process, and when it is used for the purpose of formulating and expressing divine truth, should be conceived in reverence and born in humility; for, as Samual Coleridge says: "there is small chance of truth at the goal where there is not childlike humility at the starting post."* About the syllogism there should ever be the consciousness of the finiteness of human thought. It should breathe the atmosphere of God's transcendent life when stating the fact of His immanence. It should beware of conclusions which set limitations upon God, and should ever doubt both the "Aids to Reflection," p. 182.

wisdom and truth of a reasoning process which ends with binding Christ and the Eternal Spirit to conform to, and be restrained by, the conclusions at which human reason arrives. Before the conclusion is sent on its journey to meet the problems of life and to help guide the pilgrimseeker after truth; before it is sanctioned by authority, and incorporated into the system of vital truth, it should look with far-reaching vision down the long vistas of time. It should ask the far future very earnest questions. It should ask:- Will I be needed then? Will I, who seem to state the truth to-day, fetter the truth seeker of to-morrow? Am I too exclusive? In the fresh exultation of youth, am I too arrogant of what was reverenced as the venerated faith of the years long gone, the truth which carried many burdens, and which, though now worn with age, was the guide and help of saints departed? These questions the truth seeker, the truth formulator, should ask himself. With this atmosphere of reverence, humility, forbearance, and wide horizon, the syllogism would

more largely aid the pilgrims of the night, and do better service to the Church of Christ.

One wonders, one cannot be very sure, if much that has been done and said with the claim of infallible authority would be done and said to-day if it was not for the sanctions and contentions of the past. One wonders if the doctrine of Transubstantiation, or of Consubstantiation, or any doctrine which vainly undertook to tell in human words just how the Eternal Christ is present in the Eucharist, and just how He worked His will, and communicated His presence, would be formulated and sanctioned today by a general council of the Church, if there were no previous pronouncement on the subject save the simple words of the Master Himself. Because, after all, men cannot know. They feel and know His presence in sacraments, and in the written and spoken words of truth, and in the lives of those in whom His Spirit is incarnate, but the past has taught us that the mystery of God in His relation to the soul is too