A most
gifted and sympathetic observer of our departed brother's character
and influence has said of him, contrasting him with the power of
institution, "His life will always suggest the importance of the
influence of the individual man as compared with institutional
Christianity."
In one sense, undoubtedly, this is true; but I should prefer to say
that his life-work will always show the large and helpful influence of
a great soul upon institutional Christianity. It is a superficial
and unphilosophical temperament that disparages institutions; for
institutions are only another name for that organized force and life
by which God rules the world. But it is undoubtedly and profoundly
true that you no sooner have an institution, whether in society, in
politics, or in religion, than you are threatened with the danger
that the institution may first exaggerate itself and then harden
and stiffen into a machine; and that in the realm of religion,
preeminently, those whose office it should be to quicken and infuse it
with new life should themselves come at last to "worship the net and
the drag.
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