If private judgment can be exercised on any point, it is on a
matter of the senses; now our eyes and our ears are filled with the
abuse poured out by members of our Church on her sister Churches in
foreign lands. It is not that their corrupt practices are gravely and
tenderly pointed out, as may be done by men who feel themselves also to
be sinful and ignorant, and know that they have their own great
imperfections, which their brethren abroad have not,--but we are apt not
to acknowledge them as brethren at all; we treat them in an arrogant
John Bull way, as mere Frenchmen, or Spaniards, or Austrians, not as
Christians. We act as if we could do without brethren; as if our having
brethren all over the world were not the very tenure on which we are
Christians at all; as if we did not cease to be Christians, if at any
time we ceased to have brethren. Or again, when our thoughts turn to the
East, instead of recollecting that there are sister Churches there, we
leave it to the Russians to take care of the Greeks, and to the French
to take care of the Romans and we content ourselves with erecting a
Protestant Church at Jerusalem, or with helping the Jews to rebuild
their temple there, or with becoming the august protectors of
Nestorians, Monophysites, and all the heretics we can hear of, or with
forming a league with the Mussulman against Greeks and Romans together.
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