Christ, then, I repeat, thus standing before us in the Evangelical records of his ministry, is the impersonation of his religion. What we see in Him is Christianity. Or, if it be not so, where else shall we look with the hope to find it? Who else has ever had a true _authority_ to place before us a more perfect idea, or to tell us more exactly what the Gospel is? The _Church_, indeed, some will interpose, has such authority! But examine this statement, and its untenable character speedily appears. The Church at any given moment is, and has been, simply a body of fallible mortals, like ourselves. If the Christian men of this present day cannot suppose themselves to be preserved from intellectual error in matters of religion, neither can we think the Christian men of the past to have been more highly privileged. In fact, it must be added, as we ascend into the darker periods of Church history, we come upon the most undeniable traces of ignorance, misunderstanding, worldliness and folly, on the part of the ecclesiastics of the early and the middle ages, such as deprive their judgments on the subject before us of all right or claim to unquestioned acceptance. Let any one read, for example, the accounts given by trustworthy historians[27] of that great assembly of the Church which produced the Nicene Creed. Will any one allege that in the passion and prejudice, the smallness of knowledge, the subtlety of speculation, and narrowness of heart, pervading the majority of that assembly, the Divine Spirit was peculiarly present to dictate or guide the decision arrived at, and make it worthy of the blind adhesion of future Christian generations? And, if we cannot thus admit the peculiar idea of Christianity _there_ approved, it will surely be in vain to look to any similar quarter, either of the past or of the present, for what shall supersede the living "grace and truth," seen in Christ himself. [Footnote 27: E.g., in Dean Stanley's _History of the Eastern Church_.] This conclusion is greatly strengthened by the briefest reference to the negative results of unbelief and irreligion, so prevalent in those countries which have been the longest under the influence of the old ritualistic idea of the Church and the priesthood. Positively speaking, this idea, it is needless to add, has largely failed in almost every thing except the encouragement among the people of the grossest superstitions[28]--superstitions of which there is no trace whatever in immediate connection with the Christian Master. Not, however, to dwell in detail on this unpromising theme, let us rather turn to the considerations by which our leading position may be confirmed; from which too we may learn that a better future is yet in store for us.