Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

314 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcerning universal brotherhood and benevolence, howvery far was it from taking root in society ! Thebrotherhood they extolled remained for the mass anunknown thing. It did not pass the limit of theirschool; it touched only refined and contemplativeminds. The whole heathen society was affected bythe absence of belief in the relation between Godd an as C t an t d by wha wasan tab q ' h b equally c f bf in the relation bet m d man as fcreatures of one God. The inner life of each humanbeing, his domestic life, his social life, his politicallife, all were touched in all their springs by thatopposing doctrine of philosophy according to which theAbsolute Unity, the Primal Being, the Divine, waseither the material or the formal cause working in andthrough all things. This is best seen by conciselystating o the antagonistic o truths which the ChristianChurch set forth not to the select votaries " of a school, 'not to the learned, the rich, and the refined alone, butto the poor, to the slave, to the enthralled female sex.It poured them forth as the light of the sun to gladdenevery human eye, and ennoble every human affection.I. Instead of the notion that the human mind,being a port f the divine intelligence, had becomn plained td f a twith a body and th th man was th mind, eChurch taught that it as an tirely f ct of Godwhich called every man into t Th t fth d volition ted th l t f td fused it into a body derived immediately fromth parent but ltimately k out fth It thus constituted the one man the humbeing, by a union most unsearchable in its inner