Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.—Paul to Timothy.
If we were not so accustomed to the fact, it would prove no less surprising than painful to discover the extent to which truth is apparently limited, its consummations delayed, upon the plane of earthly life, by the weakness and inadequacy of its human expression.
Who would have dreamed that the gospel which dawned upon the world at Bethlehem with such clearness and splendor, should have so far and so speedily lost its essential nature and efficiency as to have become in the fourth century little more than a bone of contention among sordid and unspiritual men?
