when He has come--the Spirit of Truth--He will guide you into all the
truth."[21] No doubt that process is even now going on, and will continue
to go on in proportion as our race develops. We are being guided into
all the truth, through all kinds of channels, spiritual, literary,
scientific, philosophical. The naive supposition that this promise was
kept on the Day of Pentecost, when a sudden access of knowledge
committed all truth to the apostles and through them to the Church
forevermore, is contradicted by the facts. The apostles had no such
knowledge and made no claims to its possession. The Church has never had
it, either. "All truth" covers much more ground than do questions of
ecclesiastical forms of government or of the nature of the sacraments.
"All truth" must go as far as the Universal goes, leaving nothing
outside its range. "All truth" must surely be such self-evident truth as
to admit of no further dissensions.

[21] St. John.

Taking truth as a circle, the symbol of perfection, we may assume that
our Lord disclosed a view of a very large arc in its circumference. But
of the arc which He disclosed no one group of His followers has as yet
perceived the whole. At the same time it is probable that each group has
perceived some arc of that arc, and an arc perceived by no other group.
"All truth" being too large for any one group to grasp, the Baptist sees
his segment, the Catholic his, the Methodist his, the Anglican his, the
Congregationalist his, until the vision of Christ is made up. I name
only the groups with which we are commonly most familiar, though we
might go through the hundreds of Christian sects and agree that each has
its angle from which it sees what is visible from no other. Though there
is likely to be error in all such perceptions a considerable portion of
truth must be there, or the sect in question would not survive. It is