Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/88

neglect of passages manifestly of the very highest importance, may serve as guages both of what we have hitherto lost and of what we may still hope to gain, in the application of the Holy Scriptures to the wants of Ecclesiastical History.

IX. Future prospects of Ecclesiastical HistoryThis peculiar relation of the Bible to the history of the Church invites one concluding train of History, thought. When, sixteen years ago, a revered teacher stood in this place, and, after a survey of the field of Modern History, asked whether there were in the existing resources of the nations of mankind any materials for a new epoch, distinct from those which have gone before, you may remember how he answered that there were none. What if the same question be asked with regard to the prospects of Ecclesiastical History? We have seen that four great phases have passed over the fortunes of the Church—Is there likely to be another? We are told that the resources of nation and race are exhausted for the outer world in which our history moves—Are there any stores of spiritual strength yet unexplored in the forces of the Christian Church? With all reverence and with all caution, may not the reflections which we have just made encourage us to hope that such a mine does exist—a virgin mine, in the original records of Christianity? We need not speculate on the probable destinies of any Christian system or community now existing in the world; we need not determine whether, as our own Protestant historian has declared, the Papacy