LXXVII.
Christianity is in no more real danger now than it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than we have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was doomed. We hold in perfect good faith, that the good news our Lord brought is the best the world will ever hear; that there has been a revelation in the man Jesus Christ, of God the Creator of the world as our Father, so that the humblest and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which men need to know him in this life, and can have his help in becoming like him, the business for which they were sent into it: and that there will be no other revelation, though this one will be, through all time, unfolding to men more and more of its unspeakable depth, and glory, and beauty, in external nature, in human society, in individual men. That, I believe to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief of average Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in words; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ’s gospel as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in the world, and desire that it shall be free to work in their own country on the most favorable conditions which can be found for it.
LXXVIII.
We should remember that truth is many-sided; that all truth comes from one source. There is only one sun in the heavens, yet, as you know, there are many beautiful colors, all of which come from the one sun. You cannot say that the red is better and truer than the blue, or that the blue is better and truer than the yellow. You may prefer one to the other; you may see that one color is more universal, more applicable for different purposes than another, but there is truth in each. In the same way there is only one earth, but there are a great many different trees which grow out of it, and which derive their nourishment from it; and although the oak may be very much better suited to England and the fir to Norway, yet we admit that there is truth in each; that one is just as good and true a tree as the other. Therefore, let us who are apt to think in the church and other religious communities that we have got all the truth ourselves, remember that truth is wider than can be apprehended by any body of human beings, and let us be tolerant to one another, not forgetting that those who are not in the same community with us hold their side of the truth as strongly as we do ours.
Each religious community has witnessed, and is witnessing, to some side of the truth. Religious communities are not perfect in themselves like trees or flowers, but for that very reason it is all the more necessary that the members of them should be tolerant, and should make the greatest effort to understand those of other religious beliefs.
LXXIX.
I can take little interest in the questions which divide Christian churches and sects, can see no reason why they should not now be working side by side to redeem our waste places, and to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
St. Ambrose was a holy man, and exceeding zealous, even to slaying for the one true creed. One day as he was walking in deep meditation as to how to bring all men to his own mind, he was aware of a stream, and a youth seated beside it. He had never seen so beautiful a countenance, and sat down by him to speak of those things on which his mind continually dwelt. To his horror he found that the beautiful face covered a most heretical mind, and he spoke in sorrowful anger to the youth of his danger. Whereupon the young stranger produced six or seven vases, all of different shapes and colors, and, as he filled them from the brook, said to the saint (as the legend is versified by Mr. Lowell):—