The second excess into which Christianity, under the action of frail human nature, easily ran was intolerance. This intolerance, as in the previous case, is only a virtue run to seed; for, as all asceticism is merely a misapplication or an exaggeration of the virtue of self-denial and self-control, so all intolerance, or defect of kindly regard to the contrary in opinion or conduct, is merely a crude or an impolitic extension of the imperative ought which lies at the root of all moral truth, and specially of all monotheistic religions. There is, indeed, a certain intolerance in truth which will not allow it to hold parley with error; and every new religion with a lofty inspiration, conscious of a divine mission, is necessarily aggressive: it delights to pluck the beard of ancestral authority, and marches right into the presence of hoary absurdity and consecrated stupidity. No doubt there is a boundary here which the divine wisdom of the Son of God pointed at emphatically enough when he was asked to bring down fire from heaven on those who taught or did otherwise; but the evil spirit of self-importance which prompted this request was too deeply engrained in human nature to be eradicated by a single warning of the great teacher. This spirit of arrogant individualism asserted itself at an early period in the disorderly Corinthian Church very much in the same way as it does amongst ourselves, specially in Scotland, at the present moment--viz. by the multiplication of sects, the exaggeration of petty distinctions, and the fomenting of petty rivalries,--"Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ" (I Cor. i. 12),--a spirit which the apostle most strongly denounces as proceeding manifestly from the overrated importance of some secondary specialty, or some accessory condition, of the body of believers, who thus clubbed themselves into a denomination, and resulting in an unkindly divergence from the common highway of evangelic life, and an intolerant desire to override one Christian brother with the private shibboleth of another, and to stamp him with the seal of their own conceit. The field in which this intolerant Spirit displayed itself was of course different, according to the influences at work at the time; but there is one field which, if church history is to teach us anything, we are bound to emphasise strongly, that is the field of dogma; for, if there be any influence that has worked more powerfully to discredit Christianity than even the immoral lives and selfish maxims of professing Christians, it is the fixation and glorification and idol-worship of the dogma. No doubt Christianity is far from being that system, or rather no system, of vague and cloudy sentiment to which some persons would reduce it: it has bones, and a firm framework; it stands upon facts, and is not without doctrines, but it does not make a parade