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The alienation between the two continually increased. On one side there was a sentiment of disdain, on the other a sentiment of hatred. Impartial witnesses on all hands perceived that science was rapidly undermining ecclesiasticism. MATHEMATICS. Mathematics had thus become the great instrument of scientific research, it had become the instrument of scientific reasoning.
Since the apostasy was twofold in its nature, comprehending a corruption of evangelical faith and the development of ecclesiasticism, it is evident that the Last Reformation must both restore primitive truth and eliminate ecclesiasticism, thus bringing back to the world the original conception of the church as embracing the whole divine family under the direct moral and spiritual dominion of Christ.
Then, and not until then, can the work of reformation be made complete. We have, therefore, to trace the rise and development of what may be forcibly expressed by the apparently pleonastic phrase human ecclesiasticism. We have already seen that in the church, as originally constituted, organization, authority, and government proceeded from the divine and not from the human.
It seems as if the genius of Scotchmen tended towards ecclesiasticism. Religion, or, rather, theology for there is an essential difference between the two impregnates their whole existence, and mere children are imbued with pronounced views upon the minutiæ of doctrinal distinctions, when they might be supposed to know only the practical bearings of hygienic laws.
Comparing now the philosophical principles on which science was proceeding, with the principles on which ecclesiasticism rested, we see that, while the former repudiated tradition, to the latter it was the main support while the former insisted on the agreement of calculation and observation, or the correspondence of reasoning and fact, the latter leaned upon mysteries; while the former summarily rejected its own theories, if it saw that they could not be coordinated with Nature, the latter found merit in a faith that blindly accepted the inexplicable, a satisfied contemplation of "things above reason."
This he has done repeatedly, only to have the new movements end in the same manner in a rule of human ecclesiasticism. Human ecclesiasticism has always been the greatest barrier to the free spiritual development of the work of Christ.
They all had some idea of His character, and however much they had grown bitter toward the forms of Christian ecclesiasticism or the social system, they preserved some standard of right and truth, and what little some of them still retained was taken from the person of the Peasant of Galilee. So they were interested in what Maxwell said. "What would Jesus do?"
What was the hope of the world? Here ecclesiasticism found its real opportunity. Here human authority and government could be and was substituted for that spiritual dominion of Christ which gave life, form, and character to his church in primitive days.
Her host's brother, the Vicar, had come to luncheon, and Isabel had had five minutes' talk with him time enough to institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism and give it up as vain. The marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural countenance, a capacious appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laughter.
I have already shown that in the primitive church the two witnesses the Word and the Spirit of God were the real vicars of Christ, giving both character and government to the universal church of God on earth. We have also seen that with the rise of human ecclesiasticism the reign of the Word and Spirit ended in so far as the Church of Rome was concerned. The same is true also of Protestantism.
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