This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...tribes into one potent nation. But Christianity itself would still remain fatally divided. Proceeding by the same method, however, and undeterred either by the glamour of the organization or the apparent authority of the priestly army arrayed before both camps, we can impose the same stern spiritual ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...tribes into one potent nation. But Christianity itself would still remain fatally divided. Proceeding by the same method, however, and undeterred either by the glamour of the organization or the apparent authority of the priestly army arrayed before both camps, we can impose the same stern spiritual test, derived from Him whom both alike acknowledge as their Origin and Head, and by the resulting success, or failure, of its operation, can discover how much, or how little real Christianity enters into either Church. We perceive, on a larger scale, the same source of discord which has prevented the alliance of Protestant sects, that the essential spiritual activity of men has been perverted, repressed, debased, and obscured by social and intellectual considerations. Those of either camp who refuse to meet upon the common spiritual basis, which is neither Protestantism nor Catholicism, but the ideal of both, those we know--and know by the authority of Christ Himself--are like unto the rich young man who would not leave his goods to follow the spiritual impulse. They are mere partisans, materialists, and slaves to the dehumanizing, despiritualizing ecclesiastical machine. But having established a firm basis common to all so-called Christians--a spiritual and religious synthesis into which all creeds, sects, and schisms can be dissolved, reconciled, and allied--we find that we have merely come to the frontier between Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and other Oriental religions. Is this soul-strewn frontier inevitable and permanent? Let us approach the problem from our own religious point of view, and work forward on lines already familiar to our thought. Imagine a sincere, spiritual man who felt an intense...
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