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Updated: June 12, 2025
The intellectual side of life is what Socrates adores; the Christian faith is applicable to a far wider circle of homely lives. Yet Christianity too, in spite of ecclesiasticism, teems with ideas. Its essence is an unprejudiced freedom of soul. Its problems are problems of character which the simplest child can appreciate. But Christianity, too, is built upon a basis of joy.
If the love of truth and the spirit of freedom which inspired their inception has at particular epochs in their history been temporarily obscured, if there is much in the ecclesiasticism both of the past and of the present which is reactionary in tendency and spirit, at least there have never been lacking protesting voices, and the authentic spirit of the Gospel tells always upon the other side.
A dismal disbelief stealthily pervaded all Europe, a denial of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny which envelops him. Ideas such as these were cherished in silence by multitudes of persons driven to them by the tyrannical acts of ecclesiasticism.
For good or evil we have entered upon a new career. The old Cambridge, which some of us knew in our youth, with its solemn ecclesiasticism, its quaint archaisms, its fantastic anomalies, its fascinating picturesqueness, its dear old barbaric unintelligible odds and ends that met us at every turn in street and chapel and hall that old Cambridge is as dead as the Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Both men caught the spirit of the hour; bigotry, creeds, conventionalities, were forgotten. They were face to face with hungry souls; with men who knew little of theology and ecclesiasticism, but much of actual life. God, sin, manhood, eternity, seemed very real to those speakers that day, and they made it plain to the tear-stained, sin-scarred faces that looked into theirs.
Sometimes from that of an open naturalism; sometimes from that of a partial yet far-reaching "naturalism under a veil" which some recent teachings on "The Being of Christianity" may exemplify, with principles and presuppositions which largely underlie the extremer forms, certainly, of the modern critique of Scripture; sometimes from the opposite quarter of an ecclesiasticism which more or less exaggerates or distorts the great ideas of corporate life and sacramental operation.
In matters of dress; in the obligatory enforcement of a uniform style of national head-gear; in the strict limitation of the number, the rights and the prerogatives of high ecclesiastical officials; in the growing unpopularity of the veil among almost every section of society; in the marked distinction which unofficially and in various phases of public life is being made by an enlightened and pressing minority between the tottering forms of a discredited Ecclesiasticism and the civil rights and duties of civilized society; in the general laxity in religious observances and ceremonies; in the slow and hidden process of secularization invading many a government department under the courageous guidance of the Governors of outlying provinces—in all of these a discerning eye can easily discover the symptoms that augur well for a future that is sure to witness the formal and complete separation of Church and State.
She had never met Mr. James before, and became greatly excited by some of the opinions he advanced. She thought he often used the word "religion," when, to her mind, he appeared to mean, sometimes "dogmatism" and sometimes, "ecclesiasticism." She bided her time, though a storm had gathered within her.
West's letters written in the following year from York Factory. He speaks of an agreement between Lord Selkirk and the Selkirk Settlers. This is a gem of ecclesiasticism. Mr. West says: "I find that it is impracticable to carry the same into effect. This is attributable to the distance of most of the settlers and the reluctance of the Scotch Settlers." Mr.
In education especially the influence of ecclesiasticism has been almost uniformly pernicious, so that it seems impossible for any country where the children are left under priestly influence to rise above a certain rather low level of civilisation.
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