I scarcely need remind you that there are great practical advantages to be derived from a course of mental travel among forms of Christian belief in many respects foreign to our own. Nothing so surely arrests our spiritual growth as a self-complacent, insular disdain of other men’s faith. To displace this pride by brotherly-kindness—to seek out lovingly the points whereon we agree with others, and not censoriously those wherein we differ, is to live in a clearer light, as well as a larger love. Then again, the powers of observation and of discrimination called into exercise by such journeyings among brethren of another speech will greatly benefit us. The very endeavour to distinguish between the good in others which we should naturalize and assimilate for ourselves, and the error which could be profitable neither for them nor for us, is most wholesome. Such studies lead us to take account of what we already have and believe; so that we come to know ourselves better by the comparison both in what we possess and in what we lack. Every section of the Church of Christ desires to include in its survey the whole fabric of revealed truth. What party will admit to an antagonist that its study of the divine edifice has been confined to a single aspect? And yet the fact is beyond all candid questioning that each group of worshippers, with whatever honesty of intention they may have started to go round about the building, and view it fairly from every side, have, notwithstanding, their favourite point of contemplation—one spot where they are most frequently to be found, intent on that side of truth to which, from temperament or circumstance, they are most attached. There is both good and evil in this inevitable partiality; but the good will be most happily realized, and the evil most successfully avoided, if we have liberality enough now and then to take each other’s places. It is possible, in this way, both to qualify and to enrich our own impressions from the observations of those who have given themselves, with all the intensity of passion, to some aspect of truth, which, while it may be the opposite, is yet the complement of the view preferred by ourselves. How often, as the result of an acquaintance made with some such diverse (and yet kindred) species of devotion, are we led to ask ourselves—‘Is there not a fuller meaning than I had supposed in this passage, or that other, of Holy Writ? Have I not, because certain passages have been abused, allowed myself unconsciously to slight or to defraud them of their due significance?’ And, in this way both those parts of Scripture we have most deeply studied, and those which we have but touched with our plummet, may disclose their blessing to us, and fill higher the measure of our joy.