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As the wiser of his contemporaries saw, Erasmus was, at heart, neither Protestant nor Papist, but an "Independent Christian"; and, as the wiser of his modern biographers have discerned, he was the precursor, not of sixteenth century reform, but of eighteenth century "enlightenment"; a sort of broad-church Voltaire, who held by his "Independent Christianity" as stoutly as Voltaire by his Deism.
I found particular satisfaction in analyzing the utterances of dignitaries of the Broad-Church party, such as Farrar and Wilberforce, whose plan for rejuvenating the coherence of the Anglican Church was to reduce all its doctrine which savored of the supernatural to symbols.
After he left our church he took his place among the Presbyterians, and I remember, despite my broad-church tendencies, thinking that he was incurring serious danger by such apostasy; but as I noted him, year after year, devoting himself to the newly founded orphan-asylum, giving all his spare time to the care of the children gathered there, even going into the market and thence bearing provisions to them in a basket, I began to feel that perhaps his soul was safe, after all.
Our rector carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation, in fact, is the natural and manly way of carrying it. The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before. Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large numbers.
Our rector carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation, in fact, is the natural and manly way of carrying it. The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before. Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large numbers.
The low-church clergy look down, as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints; the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation.
It is a land of peace. The remnant of the Indians live quietly upon their reservation, Christians and pagans uniting harmoniously, on broad-church principles, in the celebration of Christmas and in the sacrifice of the white dog to the Great Spirit. The surrounding farmers devote themselves in peace to their vocation.
From all these things the natural inference would seem to be that the authoress is neither High-Church nor Low-Church nor Dissenter, but a tolerant member of what is styled the Broad-Church party a party in which we are obliged to say that breadth and toleration are by no means universal.
As this hall had to serve also, during certain evenings in the week, for literary societies, I took pains to secure a series of large and fine historical engravings from England, France, and Germany, among them some of a decidedly religious cast, brought together after a decidedly Broad-church fashion.
The low-church clergy look down, as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints; the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation.
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