lf, each supplying what it has in
itself to the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if you
strike off from this body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or
tear out an eye, instantly the unity is destroyed; you have no longer
an entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of the
whole, a part, a portion; no unity whatever.

This will help us to understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If
the ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the different
Churches whereof it was composed, if the different members of each
Church, were similar--one in this, that they all held the same views,
all spoke the same words, all viewed truth from the same side, they
would have no unity; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the
sand-pit over again--units, multiplied it may be to infinity, but you
would have no real unity, and therefore, no peace. No unity,--for
wherein consists the unity of the Church of Christ? The unity of ages,
brethren, consists it in this--that every age is merely the repetition
of another age, and that which is held in one is held in another?
Precisely in the same way, that is _not_ the unity of the ages of the
Christian Church.

Every century and every age has held a different truth, has put forth
different fragments of the truth. In early ages for example, by
martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal sanctity of truth, rather than
give up which a man must lose his life.... In our own age it is quite
plain those are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we
put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its socialisms,
proclaims another truth--the brotherhood of the Church of Christ; so
that the unity of ages subsists on the same principle as that of the
unity of the human body: and just as every separate ray--the violet,
the blue, and the orange--make up the white ray, so these manifold
fragments of truth blended together make up the one entire and perfect
white ray of Truth. And with regard to individuals, taking the case of
the Reformation, it was given to one Church to proclaim that salvation
is a thing received, and not local; to another to proclaim
justification by faith; to another the sovereignty of God; to another
the supremacy of the Scriptures; to another the right of private
judgment, the duty of the individual conscience. Unite these all, and
then you have the Reformation one--one in spite of manifoldness; thos