as some have
maintained, without an inner principle of movement, but with a
constant repetition of oppositions underlying its necessary
development. The same, contrasts continually appear throughout its
course, and seem never to wear themselves out. From the beginning
there has always been the broader and the narrower type of thought--a
St Paul and St John, as well as a St Peter and St James; the doctrine
which leans to the works, and the doctrine which leans to grace; the
milder and the severer interpretations of human nature and of the
divine dealings with it--a Clement of Alexandria, an Origen and a
Chrysostom, as well as a Tertullian, an Augustine, and a Cyril of
Alexandria, an Erasmus no less than a Luther, a Castalio as well as a
Calvin, a Frederick Robertson as well as a John Newman. Look at these
men and many others equally significant on the spiritual side as they
look to God, or as they work for men, how much do they resemble one
another! The same divine life stirs in them all. Who will undertake to
settle which is the truer Christian? But look at them on the
intellectual side and they are hopelessly disunited. They lead rival
forces in the march of Christian thought--forces which may yet find a
point of conciliation, and which may not be so widely opposed as they
seem, but whose present attitude is one of obvious hostility. Men may
meet in common worship and in common work, and find themselves at one.
The same faith may breathe in their prayers, and the same love fire
their hearts. But men who think can never be at one in their thoughts
on the great subjects of the Christian revelation. They may own the
same Lord, and recognise and reverence the same types of Christian
character, but they will differ so soon as they begin to define their
notions of the Divine, and draw conclusions from the researches either
of ancient or of modern theology. Of all the false dreams that have
ever haunted humanity, none is more false than the dream of catholic
unity in this sense. It vanishes in the very effort to grasp it, and
the old fissures appear within the most carefully compacted structures
of dogma.

Religion, therefore, is not to be confounded with theology, with
schemes of Christian thought--nor, for that part of the matter, with
schemes of Christian order. It is not to be found in any set of
opinions or in any special ritual of worship. The difficulties of
modern theology, the theories of modern science (when they