With much to make us humble in the history of the Christian Church, and many faults to deplore in the most conspicuous Christian men, the same types of divine excellences yet meet us everywhere as we look along the line of the Christian centuries—the heroism of a St Paul, an Ignatius, an Origen, an Athanasius, a Bernard, a Luther, a Calvin, a Chalmers, a Livingstone; the tender and devout affectionateness of a Mary, a Perpetua, a Monica; the enduring patience and self-denial of an Elizabeth of Hungary, a Mrs Hutcheson, a Mrs Fry; the beautiful holiness of a St John, a St Francis, a Fenelon, a Herbert, a Leighton. Under the most various influences, and the most diverse types of doctrine, the same fruits of the Spirit constantly appear—"Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."[13]

All this sameness in diversity disappears when we turn to theology. The differences in this case are radical. They are not diversities of gifts with the same spirit, but fundamental antagonisms of thought. As some men are said to be born Platonists, and some Aristotelians, so some are born Augustinians, and some Pelagians or Arminians. These names have been strangely identified with true or false views of Christianity. What they really denote is diverse modes of Christian thinking, diverse tendencies of the Christian intellect, which repeat themselves by a law of nature. It is no more possible to make men think alike in theology than in anything else where the facts are complicated and the conclusions necessarily fallible. The history of theology is a history of "variations;" not indeed, 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