Excerpt from A Discourse: Delivered at the Dedication of the Chapel, Built by the Church of the Disciples, Wednesday, March 15, 1848 Church - as it was - as it is - as it ought to be - this subject becomes more and more interesting every year. The tendency of the age draws our minds to ward it; for in all things the present century tends toward union, harmony, synthesis, as plainly as the last century tended to division, individualism, analysis. We see this in the material world, in those inventions which make the inhabitants of the Atlantic coast a neighbor to the dweller on the Andes. We notice it in science, in the universal disposition to look at the alogies and harmonies of the Universe, and to trace one Plan running through the thousandfold varieties of Nature. In industrial life we seek for Combined Labor, where formerly Division of Labor was the watchword. So in religion, the Church Question; that is, the question of Christian Union and Coopera tion is beginning to have an especial interest. Men are growing weary of an excessive Individualism. They feel the loneliness of a merely independent thought and action. They say with the Poet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.