CHAPTER II - ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS, ANTECEDENTLY CONSIDERED

Summary

ON THE PROBABILITY OF DEVELOPMENTS IN CHRISTIANITY.

1. If Christianity is a fact, and can be made subject-matter of exercises of the reason, and impresses an idea of itself on our minds, that idea will in course of time develope in a series of ideas connected and harmonious with one another, and unchangeable and complete, as is the external fact itself which is thus represented. It is the peculiarity of the human mind, that it cannot take an object in, which is submitted to it, simply and integrally. It conceives by means of definition or description; whole objects do not create in the intellect whole ideas, but are, to use a mathematical phrase, thrown into series, into a number of statements, strengthening, interpreting, correcting each other, and with more or less exactness approximating, as they accumulate, to a perfect image. There is no other way of learning or of teaching. We cannot teach except by aspects or views, which are not identical with the thing itself which we are teaching. Two persons will convey the same truth to another, yet by methods and through representations altogether different. The same person will treat the same argument differently in an essay or speech, according to the accident of the day of writing, or of the audience, yet it will be the same.

And the more claim an idea has to be considered living, the more various will be its aspects; and the more social and political is its nature, the more complicated and subtle will be its developments, and the longer and more eventful will be its course.