A Common Christian Language

 Jesus prays for his disciples: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20-21 NRSV)

The language of Christian feeling can never be successfully counterfeited. The language of the dry intellect, the language of the head, may be misunderstood. Hence wherever religion has consisted in theological dogmas alone, fierce strifes have arisen. 

But when the gospel has been addressed to men's hearts, and has been received by faith in its transforming power, the weapons of denominational warfare are cast away, and believers vie with one another in magnifying our common Saviour. Such, thank God, are the happy times upon which we have fallen. We live in a day when the Holy Spirit has come down upon the evangelical churches, and we now understand one another, because our hearts speak. In the eras of the warmest theological controversy this heart unison was not noticed amid the din and discord of clashing swords. Professor Shedd says that 

‘Tried by the test of exact dogmatic statement there is a plain difference between the Arminian creed and that of the Calvinist; but tried by the test of practical piety and devout feeling, there is little difference between the character of John Wesley and John Calvin. The practical religious life is much more a product of the Holy Spirit than is the speculative construction of truth.' 

The advance of spirituality will be the advance of that unity for which Jesus prayed in his wonderful high-priestly prayer in the seventeenth of St. John. 

— Daniel Steele, Jesus Exultant (1899) Chapter 3.

The Anointing and Orthodoxy

"And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and because no lie is of the truth Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, [even] he that denieth the Father and the Son Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also." 1 John 1:20-23 RV

In connection with the word χρῖσμα (chrisma), St. John explains the origin of antichrist. All who have the chrism, or anointing, know and honor the Christ, the anointed. "As long," says Dr. Whedon, "as we possess the holy chrism we will adhere to holy Christ." All who do not receive and retain the sanctifying chrism reject or abandon the Christ, and become antichrists, because of the absence of the enlightening chrism. "No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema; and no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor. 12:3, R. V.)

The doctrine of the supreme divinity of Christ, revealed to the soul only by the anointing, protects all the other doctrines of the evangelical system. Hence the Holy Ghost is the only conservator of orthodoxy. The thumbscrew, as a substitute, is a stupendous failure, as is proven by the ghastly history of the Inquisition. The soft doctrines of liberalism creep into churches which do not honor the Third Person of the adorable Trinity, except with their lips, while their hearts are without his indwelling. Departures from him, whether new or old, are always departures from the evangelical standard.

— Half Hours With St. Paul and Other Bible Readings Chapter 21.