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The Philip Schaff sections of this article are a little more difficult to understand but stay steadfast it is worth it. As is normal, the sections and parts by Edward D. Andrews are easy to understand.

The idea of the Church

Christianity, which, as the absolute religion, holds this central, ruling position in history, and on which depends the salvation of the human race, exists not merely as something subjective in single pious individuals, but also as an objective, organized, visible society, as a kingdom of Christ on earth, or as a church. The church is in part a teaching institution to train men for heaven, and as such destined to pass away in its present form when the salvation shall be completed; in part, the everlasting communion of the redeemed, both on earth and in heaven. In the first view, as a visible organization, it embraces all, who are baptized, whether in the Greek, or Roman, or Protestant communion. It contains, therefore, many hypocrites and unbelievers, who will never be entirely separated from it until the end of the world. Hence our Lord compares the kingdom of heaven, Matt. 13., to a field, where wheat and tares grow together until the harvest; and to a net, which “gathers of every kind.” The true essence of the church, however, the eternal communion of saints, consists only of the regenerate and converted, who are united by a living faith with Christ the head, and, through him, with one another.

Though the church is thus a society of men, yet it is by no means on that account a production of men, called into existence by their own invention and will, like the Westboro Baptist Church, excessively politically activist churches, Apostolic Pentecostals, United Methodist Church, the prosperity megachurches, and many other so-called Christian denominations. First-century Christianity was founded by God himself through Christ, through His incarnation, his life, his sufferings, death and resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, for his own glory and the redemption of the world. For this very reason, the gates of Hades will not overpower it. (Matt. 16:18) It is the foundation of Christianity, outside of which there is no salvation, the channel of the continuous revelation of God and the powers of eternal life. There have always been remnants of true Christianity since the first century Christians.

The apostle Paul commonly calls the church the body of Christ, and believers the members of this body. As a body in general, the church is an organic union of many members, which have, indeed, different gifts and callings, yet are pervaded by the same lifeblood, ruled by the same head, animated by the same soul, all working together towards the same end. This is set forth in a masterly and incomparable manner, particularly in the twelfth and fourteenth chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians. As the body of Christ, the church is the dwelling-place of Christ, in which he exerts all the powers of his genuine Christian life, and also the organ, through which he acts upon the world as Redeemer; as the soul manifests its activity only through the body, in which it dwells. The Lord, therefore, through the Holy Ghost, is present in the church, in its accurate and balanced biblical worldview and by means of grace, especially in the word and the services; present, indeed, in a spiritual, invisible, incomprehensible way, but none the less really, efficiently, and manifestly present, in Jesus’ complete divine person. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Jesus is with true, genuine Christianity in spirit, in word, in influence and guidance but also in person, right “among them.” (Matt. 18:20) “Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20). Hence Paul says of the church “is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” – Ephesians 1:23.

We may justly say, therefore, that the church is the continuation of the life and work of Christ upon earth, though never, indeed, so far as men in their present state are concerned, without a mixture of sin and error. In the church, the Lord is perpetually born anew in the hearts of believers through the Holy Spirit, who reveals Christ to us, and appropriates his work and merits to the individual soul. In the church the Lord speaks words of truth and consolation to fallen man. In and through her he heals the spiritually sick, raises the spiritually dead, distributes the heavenly manna, gives himself, as spiritual food, to the hungry soul. In her are repeated his sufferings and death; and in her, too, are continually celebrated anew his resurrection and ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In her Godly devotional state, like her Head in the days of his humiliation, she bears the form of a servant. She is hated, despised, and mocked by the ungodly world. But from this lowly form beams forth a divine radiance, “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John1:14) In her womb must we be born again of incorruptible seed; from her breast must we be nourished unto spiritual life. For she is the Lamb’s bride, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the temple of the living God, “the pillar and ground of the truth.” Those ancient maxims: Qui ecclesiam non habet matrem, Deum non habet patrem; and Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (He who does not have a mother, the Church, does not have the Father, and there is no salvation outside the church), though perverted by the Catholic Church, and applied in a carnal and contracted sense to herself as the church, are yet perfectly correct, when we refer them not simply to a particular denomination but the actual biblically guided churches that are a mirror-like reflection of first century Christianity, the spiritual body of Christ, the spiritual Jerusalem, “which is the mother of us all.” (Gal. 4:26) For since Christ, as Redeemer, is to be found neither in Heathenism, nor in Judaism, nor in Islamism, but only in the church, the fundamental proposition: “Out of Christ no salvation,” necessarily includes the other: “No salvation out of the true church.” This, of course, does not imply, that mere external connection with it is of itself sufficient for salvation, but simply, that salvation is not divinely guaranteed out of the Christian church. There are thousands of church members, who are not vitally united to Christ, and who will, therefore, be finally lost; but there are no real Christians anywhere, who are not, at the same time, members of Christ’s spiritual body, and as such connected with some branch of his visible kingdom on earth. Church membership is not the principle of salvation—which is Christ alone—but the necessary condition of it, because it is the divinely appointed means of bringing the man into contact with Christ and all his benefits.

The Development of the Church

The church is not to be viewed as a thing at once finished and perfect, but as a historical fact, as a human society, subject to the laws of history, to genesis, growth, development. Only the dead is done and stagnant. All created life, even the vegetable, and especially animal and human life, though always in substance the same, is essentially motion, process, constant change, the unceasing transition from the lower to the higher. Every member of the body, every faculty of the soul exists at first merely potentially or virtually and attains its full proportions only by biblical guidance; just as the tree grows from the germ, unfolding first the root and trunk, then the branches, leaves, blossoms, and fruit. The same law holds in the case of the new man in Christ. The believer is at first a child, a babe in Christ, born of water and of the Spirit, and rises gradually, by the faithful use of the means of grace, unto perfect (that is, complete) manhood in Christ, the author, and finisher of our faith, until this spiritual life reaches its perfection in the resurrection of the body to life everlasting. As the church is the organic whole of individual believers, it must likewise be conceived as subject to the same law of development, or, to use the expressive figure of the Savior, as a grain of mustard seed, which grows at last to a mighty tree, overshadowing the world. The church, therefore, like every individual Christian, and, indeed, like Christ himself in his human nature, must be viewed, under her historical form, as having her infancy, her childhood, her youth, and her mature age.

To avoid misunderstanding, however, we must here make an important distinction. The church, in its idea, or viewed objectively in Christ, “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” (Col. 2:9) who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, is from the first complete and unchangeable. So also, the revealed word of Christ is eternal truth and the absolute rule of faith and practice, which the Christian world can never transcend. The doctrine of an improvement on Biblical Christianity, of an advance on the part of men beyond revelation, or beyond Christ himself, is entirely rationalistic and unchristian. Such a pretended improvement was but a deterioration, a return to the old Judaism or Paganism.

But from this idea of the church in the divine mind, and in the person of Christ, we must distinguish its actual manifestation on earth; from the objective revelation itself, we must discriminate the subjective apprehension and appropriation of it in the mind of humanity at a given time. This last is progressive. Humanity at large can no more possess itself at once of the fullness of the divine life in Christ than the individual Christian can in a moment become a perfect holy person. This complete appropriation of life is accomplished only by a gradual process, involving much trouble and toil. The church on earth advances from one degree of purity, knowledge, holiness, to another; struggles victoriously through the opposition of an ungodly world; overcome innumerable foes within and without; surmounts all obstructions; survives all diseases; till at last, entirely purged from sin and error, and passing, at the general resurrection, from her steadfast loyalty to her triumphant state, she shall stand forth eternally complete. This whole process, however, is but the full actual unfolding of the church which existed potentially at the outset in Christ; a process by which the Redeemer’s Spirit and life are completely appropriated and impressed on every feature of humanity. Christ is thus the beginning, the middle, and the end of the entire history of the church.

The growth of the church is in the first place an outward extension over the earth, till all nations shall walk in the light of the gospel. It is with reference mainly to this, that our Lord compares the kingdom of God to a grain of mustard, which is the least of all seeds, yet grows to be a great tree, in whose branches the fowls of heaven lodge (Matt. 13:31-32). In the second place, it consists in an inward unfolding of the idea of the church, in doctrine, life, worship, and government; the human nature, in all its parts, coming more and more to bear the impress of that new principle of life, which has been given in Christ to humanity, and which is yet to transform the world into a glorious and blessed kingdom of God. To this our Lord refers in the parable of the leaven, “which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (Matt. 13:33). The apostle Paul, also, has this in view in numerous passages in his epistles, where he speaks of the growth and edification of the body of Christ,

Ephesians 4:13-16 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the accurate knowledge [24] of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. ¹⁴So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of teaching, by the trickery of men, by craftiness with regard to the scheming of deceit; ¹⁵but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined together and held together by every supporting ligament, according to the working by measure of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

This development, moreover, is organic. It is not an outward, mechanical aggregation of facts, which have no living connection. It is a process of life, which springs from within, from the vital energy implanted in the church, and which remains, in all its course, identical with itself, as man through all the stages of his life still continues man. What is untrue and imperfect in an earlier stage is done away by that which follows; what is true and essential is preserved and made the living germ of further development. The history of all Christian nations, and of all times, from the birth of Christ to the final judgment, forms one connected whole; and only in its totality does it exhibit the entire fulness of the new creation. What I, Edward D. Andrews would clarify here, concerning the words of Philip Schaff, is that Jesus started what would become true Christianity, the apostles grew it to such an extent that it would survive the great apostasy that was to come, initially, Catholicism, followed by false denominations of Protestantism. From the first century until the day of Armageddon, true Christians and true Christianity have survived the perilous journey through many forms of false Christianity.

THE WALDENSES: Unorthodox or Searchers of Truth?

For example, Bishop Agobard of Lyons, France (779–840 C.E.), who came out passionately against image worship, churches dedicated to saints, and church worship that was not in harmony with the Holy Scriptures. Bishop Claudius (d. sometime between 827–839 C.E.) condemned prayers to saints, the veneration of relics, and the cross as an image of worship, and he rejected church tradition as being in opposition to the Scriptures. Claudius of Turin has long been referred to as “the first Protestant reformer.” Then, we have archdeacon Bérenger of Tours, France (c. 999–1088), one of the most prominent theologians of his day, opposed the dogma of transubstantiation. He argued that the bread and wine are emblematic and not miraculously changed into the body and blood of Christ. He also defended that the Bible was superior to tradition. Bérenger was excommunicated as a heretic in 1050 C.E. The 12th century C.E., 200 years before John Wycliffe (the Morning Star of the Reformation) and John Huss and 300 years before Luther, in Southern France and the Alpine valleys we find Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne. Bruys as a priest gave up the priesthood because he differed with the church on infant baptism, transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, and worship of the cross. Henry of Lausanne (AKA Henry of Cluny) was a monk who, begun speaking out boldly against church liturgy, the corrupt clergy, and the religious hierarchy system. He insisted that the Bible alone is the sole rule of faith and worship. Then we come to Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons France, the actual founder of the Waldenses, who had the Bible translated from Latin into the common languages. The early Waldenses viewed the Bible as the one source of religious truth. They rejected image worship, veneration of the cross and relics, the worship of Mary, prayers to saints, transubstantiation, infant baptism, purgatory, deathbed repentance, confession to priests, Masses for the dead, papal pardons and indulgences, and priestly celibacy. Remember this, true Christians and some semblance of true Christian has always existed, and it is mandatory upon every Christian to seek out the truth and the true church of his day. And of Andrews’ excursion.

CHURCH HISTORY: The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of the Waldenses

But as the church on earth is in perpetual conflict with the unbelieving world, and as believers themselves are still encumbered with sin and error, this development of the church is not a regular and quiet process, but a constant struggle. It goes by extremes, through all sorts of obstructions and diseases, through innumerable heresies and schisms. But in the hand of Him, who can bring good even out of evil, these distractions themselves must ultimately serve the cause of truth and piety. Edward D. Andrews, “We as true Christians must know the truth for ourselves and then we can set ourselves free from any form of false worship and false Christianity as we seek the truth.”

THE WALDENSES: From the Catholic Church to Heresy to Protestantism?

History properly allows no pause. Single lateral streams of it, indeed, may dry up; small sects, for instance, which have fulfilled their mission, or even large divisions of the church, which once played a highly important part, but have willfully set themselves against all historical progress, may become stagnant, and congeal into dead formalism as is the case with most of the Oriental churches. But the mainstream of church history moves uninterruptedly onward and must finally reach its divinely appointed end. Ecclesia non potest deficere (Church cannot fail). Edward D. Andrews, “the true Christian and true Christianity cannot fail but many churches and denominations have done just that.”

But together with the wheat, according to the parable already quoted, the tares, also, ripen for the harvest of the judgment. Accompanying the development of the good, of truth, of Christianity, there is also a development of the evil, of falsehood, of Antichristianity. Together with the mystery of godliness, there works also a mystery of iniquity. And the two processes are often in so close contact, that it requires the keenest eye to discriminate rightly between light and shade, between the work of God and the work of Satan, who, we know, often transforms himself into an angel of light. Judas was among the apostles, and Antichrist sits in the temple of God. (2 Thess. 2:4) Edward D. Andrews, “the apostle John makes it all to clear that there are many antichrists, many of which were in his day, these being any person, group, government, or organization against Christ.” The hand of justice, indeed, rules even here, turning wicked thoughts and deeds to shame, and punishing the enemies of God; but in the present world, this retribution is only partially administered. The famous sentence of Schiller, “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,” must, accordingly, be so far corrected: “The history of the world is a judgment of the world,” distributing blessing and curse; but not the final judgment, at which alone the curse and blessing will be complete. If Göthe, in his conversations with Eckermann, says of nature; “There is in nature something approachable and something unapproachable; many things can be only to a certain extent understood, and nature always retains something mysterious, which human faculties are insufficient to fathom;” the same may be said, still more aptly, of history. Here, too, we encounter many mysteries, which eternity alone will fully solve. Here, too, we find everywhere the working of a revealed and a hidden God, who can be approached only by a mind reverently pious and deeply humble. All is calculated to stimulate man, who, even on the heights of science, must “eat his bread in the sweat of his face,” to renewed investigation, to greater faith. As prophecy can be perfectly understood only in the light of its fulfillment; the Old Testament, only by the New; so the history of the church can be perfectly comprehended, only when it shall have laid open all the fullness and variety of its contents, and shall have reached its goal. As the Jewish economy was a prophecy and type of the Christian dispensation, so the history of the true church (true Christians and true Christianity) is but a prophecy and a type of the triumphant kingdom of God; and eternity alone will furnish a complete commentary on the developments of time.

The Church and the World

The church, like Christianity itself, of which it is the vehicle, is a supernatural principle, a new creation of God through Christ, far transcending all that human intelligence and can of themselves produce. As such, she appears at first in direct hostility to the world, which lies in wickedness; and so far, the history of the church and that of the world, (here taken in the sense of profane history), are in mutual conflict. But since Christianity is ordained for men and is intended to raise them to their proper perfection (completeness), this opposition cannot be directed against nature as such, as it has come from God himself, and constitutes the true essence of man, but only against the corruption of nature, against sin and error; and it must cease in proportion as these ungodly elements are overcome. Christianity aims not to annihilate human nature, but to redeem and sanctify it. It can truly say, Nihil humani a me alienum puto (Nothing human is alien to me). Revelation is intended not to destroy reason, but to elevate it, and fill it with the light of divine truth. The church must finally subdue the whole world, not with an arm of flesh, but with the weapons of faith and love, the Spirit and the Word, and lay it as a trophy at the feet of the crucified Redeemer. Thus, the supernatural becomes natural. It becomes more and more at home on earth and in humanity. In this view, also, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, so that we can see, feel, taste, and enjoy his glory.

Nor is it merely a single department of the world’s life, which the kingdom of God proposes thus to pervade and control, but the world as a whole. Christianity is absolutely universal in its character (Matt. 24:14; 28:19-20; Acts 1:8); it is designed for all nations, for all times, and for all spheres of human existence. The church is humanity itself, regenerate, and on the way to perfection. The whole creation groans after redemption, and after the glorious liberty of the children of God. No moral order of the world can ever become complete, without being permeated throughout by the life of the Godman. Indeed, even the body, and the system of nature, in which it belongs, are to come under the all-pervading and transforming power of the Gospel. The process of the new creation is to close with the resurrection of the body, and the manifestation of new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Hence our Lord compares the kingdom of God to leaven, which is destined to pervade the whole lump, the entire human nature, spirit, soul, and body. – Matthew 13:33.

The several spheres of the world, in its good sense, or the essential forms, ordained by God himself, for the proper unfolding of the human life, are particularly the family, the state, science, art, and morality. On all these Christianity, in her course, exerts a purifying and sanctifying influence, making them a branch to the glory of God and the establishment of his kingdom, till God shall be all in all.

It recognizes the family, that seminary of the state and the church, as a divine institution, but raises it to a higher level than it ever occupied before. It makes monogamy a law, places the relative duties of husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant on their highest religious ground, and consecrates the whole institution by showing its reference to the sacred union of Christ with his church. It is in the history of Christianity, therefore, and particularly among the Christian nations, that we behold marriage in its happiest forms, and meet with the most beautiful exhibitions of domestic life.

So also, the state is regarded by Christianity as a divine institution for maintaining order in human society, for encouraging good and punishing evil, and for promoting generally the public weal. But the magistrate himself is made dependent on the absolute sovereignty of God and responsible to him, and subjects are taught to obey “in the Lord.” Thus, arbitrary despotism is counteracted; obedience is shorn of its slavish character; cruel and hurtful institutions are gradually abolished, and wise and wholesome laws are introduced. History, in this view, is to end in a theocracy, in which all dominion and power shall be given to the saints of the Most High, all nations be united into one family, and joyfully yield themselves to the divine will as their only law. Andrews writes,

There are clear principles set out in the Bible that permit Christians to take a balanced, biblical view of voting and for whom they should be voting. Moreover, there appears to be no principle against the practice of voting itself. However, if we are examining the Scriptures and reason from the Scriptures (Ac 17:2-3, 11), we can vote with a clean conscience. We will use Trump as our example because he seems to be the lightning rod for many “Christians” who cannot fathom how other Christians could vote for such a man. Some principles will be mentioned here at the outset. No politician is Jesus Christ, so stop looking for such a person. By the time most politicians reach the United States Senate, they are generally speaking morally crooked, perverse, distorted, dishonest, and evasive when they are compared alongside the just, right and correct ways of the wise servants of God. (Deut. 32:5; Ps 101:4; Prov. 2:15; 8:8; 11:20; 17:20; 19:1; 28:6) This is not always true nor is it always to the fullest extent of their character, but they are somewhere on the spectrum of morally crooked, perverse, distorted, dishonest, and evasive. Yet, all is well because we are not voting for the character of the man or woman but rather for their voting record. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words, in this case, voting actions speak louder than political rhetoric.

While former President Trump may or may not be a conservative, genuine, Christian by any means (Matt 7:17-18, 21-23), he is adamant about proposing conservative justices on the US Supreme Court (three to date), which can protect Christians freedom for decades to come. Christians will not be forced to share in the sins of the world (i.e., make a cake as a bakery or take photographs as a photographer for homosexual weddings), they can act on their Bible-based conservative Christian conscience. Trump is also very serious about protecting America and the rest of the world from Islamic terrorism and Islam’s agenda of undermining our Christian nation(s). Trump is also serious about dealing with the illegal immigrants that are costing the nation and being used only for Democratic votes. Moreover, he is concerned with the gainful employment of everyone. In addition, he is bringing peace to the middle east (Three Nobel Peace Prizes nominations thus far).

However, more importantly, President Trump was fighting to rebuild what Present Obama and Vice President Joe Biden tore down. President Obama had/has the worldview that the United States was too big and too powerful and had abused its power by victimizing and taking from weaker nations. Therefore, under Obama’s twisted reasoning, if the United States were weakened, the other countries could be strengthened, which would then make the world a fairer place, namely, a social justice mentality. President Obama weakened the United States military crippling them from fulfilling one Bible principle. He also very much weakened the moral fabric of the United States by implementing liberal progressive values in place of biblical Judeo-Christian values. The election of Donald J. Trump halted this implemented liberal progressive worldview from taking US citizens down the path that many European countries had long known. In the four years Trump has shown himself willing to fulfill Paul’s words in two places with Scripture. Again, Paul told Timothy that we are to pray for leaders, so “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” (1 Tim. 2:1-2) Now, we allowed Joe Biden to win the presidency and turn America backwards again to a socialist leaning nation divided by race that is perpetuated the Democratic party.

1 Timothy 2:1-2 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
2 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, ² for kings and all who are in high positions, [why?] that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

Certainly, logic dictates that if we are urged to pray for a politician; then, we can clearly act on behalf of our prayer by voting for that politician. Why do we pray and vote for politicians? We vote for politicians that have a track record of passing legislation that will protect religious freedoms while we lead a peaceful and quiet life carrying out the great commission that Jesus gave us. Then, one may ask or comment that Trump had no voting record. Yes, but all sixteen of the Republicans running with him did have a voting record and they evidenced being morally crooked, perverse, distorted, dishonest, and evasive with the exception of maybe one or two but they could not have beaten Hillary. The USA was ready for something other than the devious whimsical words of the same political mindset they had been experiencing for decades. Trump has been carrying out tremendous conservative actions since taking office to the surprise of even those who voted for him. Now, we have to hope that we take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and Trump runs in 2024 or someone like Ron DeSantis of Florida.

Moreover, President Trump, against all the odds had been carrying out another aspect of God’s Word.

Romans 13:1 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹³ Let every soul be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God, and those that exist have been placed[2] by God.

Does this verse mean that God has miraculously set up and established every governmental authority since the beginning of man? No, not at all. God is indirectly allowed governments to form, meaning that they serve a purpose by their presence. Many governments make some effort to make laws that protect their public. Some governments abuse their power in the extreme, like Adolf Hitler. Obama abused his power in that he willfully contributed to the United States abandoning their biblical Judeo-Christian values and shift toward the liberal progressive worldview. He also willfully weakened the United States’ ability to protect the world from existing threats. Governmental authorities exist because God has allowed them to exist. In some cases, some leaders use their power to protect religious freedom and promote a biblical worldview. The United States has protected the world for over a century from wicked nations and other threats, spilling much of their people’s blood and treasures. The world has largely been ungrateful. However, this peace that we have had since World War II, has allowed Christians to carry out their evangelism work in relative freedom. – Matthew 24:14; 28:19-20; Acts 1:8.

To science, the investigation and knowledge of truth, Christianity owns no inherent opposition but imparts a new impulse, and itself gives birth to the loftiest of all sciences, theology. It is always active, however, in purging science from error and egoism; it leads her to the highest source of all wisdom and knowledge, to God revealed in Christ; and will not rest, till it shall have transformed all the branches of learning into theosophy, and thus brought them back to the ground, from which they sprang. What Bacon says of philosophy is true of science in general: “Philosophia obiter libata abducit a Deo, penitus hausta reducit ad eundem.” (Philosophy is, by the way of evil men away from God, the internet as it is drunk it leads back to the same.)

Art, also, whose object is to represent the idea of beauty, the church takes into her service, and herself produces the noblest creations in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry. For Christ is the fairest of the children of men, the actual embodiment of the highest ideal of the imagination, the complete harmony of spirit and nature, of soul and body, of thought and form, of heaven and earth, of God and man; and the anthems of eternity can never exhaust his praise. The scope of history in this department is to spiritualize all art in worship, or divine service.

Lastly, Christianity transforms the whole moral life of individuals, and of nations; breathes into morality its true life, love to God; and ceases not till all sin is banished from the earth, and holiness, which is essential to the idea of the church, is fully realized in the life of redeemed humanity. God is the fountain of all law, truth, beauty, and virtue; and as all created things proceed from him, so all must return to him at last through Christ. Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life,” by whom all must come to the Father; the prophet, the priest, and the king of the world.

by Philip Schaff and Edward D. Andrews