Catholicism and Protestantism (in so far as they are more than names for institutionalism and mysticism, which are permanent types) are both obsolescent phases in the evolution of the Christian religion.  ’The time cometh when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men worship the Father.’

A profound reconstruction is demanded, and for those who have eyes to see has been already for some time in progress.  The new type of Christianity will be more Christian than the old, because it will be more moral.  A number of unworthy beliefs about God are being tacitly dropped, and they are so treated because they are unworthy of Him.  The realm of nature is being claimed for Him once more; the distinction between natural and supernatural is repudiated; we hear less frequent complaints that God ‘does nothing’ because He does not assert Himself by breaking one of His own laws.  The divinity of Christ implies—­one might almost say it means—­the eternal supremacy of those moral qualities which He exhibited in their perfection.  ’Conversio fit ad Dominum ut Spiritum,’ as Bengel said.  The visible or Catholic Church is not the name of an institution which has the privilege of being governed by bishops.  It is ‘dispersed throughout the whole world,’ under many banners and many disguises.  Its political reunion is (Plato would say) an hen mhytho ehyche, and is at present neither to be expected nor desired.  Among those who are by right citizens of the spiritual kingdom, those only are in danger of exclusion from it who entrench themselves in a little fort of their own and erect barriers, which may make them their own prisoners, but which will not hinder the great commonwealth of seekers after truth from working out modern problems by modern lights, until the whole of our new and rich inheritance, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic, shall be brought again under the obedience of Christ.

FOOTNOTES: 

     [24] In 1908.

     [25] Palmer’s Narrative, p 20.

     [26] Contemporary Review, April 1899.

     [27] The Church and the Ministry, pp. 9, 10.

     [28] Ibid., p. 74.

     [29] The Church and the Ministry, p. 110.

     [30] Ibid., p. 344.

     [31] Ibid., p. 345.

     [32] Ibid., p. 348.

     [33] The Mission of the Church, p. 32.

     [34] Church Congress Report, 1896, p. 143.

     [35] Ibid., p. 142.

     [36] Church Congress Report, 1903, p. 15.

     [37] Ibid., p. 17.

     [38] The New Theology and the Old Religion, p. 162.

     [39] Church Congress Report, 1903, p. 16.

     [40] Ibid.

     [41] The New Theology and the Old Religion, p. 163.