The condition of the heart, which is religion, the experience through Jesus which is Christianity, is primarily an individual matter.  But it is not solely such.  It is a common experience also.  Schleiermacher recognises the common element in the Christian consciousness, the element which shows itself in the Christian experience of all ages, of different races and of countless numbers of men.  By this recognition of the Christian Church in its deep and spiritual sense, Schleiermacher hopes to escape the vagaries and eccentricities, and again the narrowness and bigotries of pure individualism.  No liberal theologian until Schleiermacher had had any similar sense of the meaning of the Christian Church, and of the privilege and duty of Christian thought to contribute to the welfare of that body of men believing in God and following Christ which is meant by the Church.  This is in marked contrast with the individualism of Kant.  Of course, Schleiermacher would never have recognised as the Church that part of humanity which is held together by adherence to particular dogmas, since, for him, Christianity is not dogma.  Still less could he recognise as the Church that part of mankind which is held together by a common tradition of worship, or by a given theory of organisation, since these also are historical and incidental.  He meant by the Church that part of humanity, in all places and at all times, which has been held together by the common possession of the Christian consciousness and the Christian experience.  The outline of this experience, the content of this consciousness, can never be so defined as to make it legislatively operative.  If it were so defined we should have dogma and not Christianity.  Nevertheless, it may be practically potent.  The degree in which a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and experience with that of the Christian world is problematical.  In Schleiermacher’s own case, the identification of some of his contentions as, for example, the thought that God is not personal with the great Christian consciousness of the past, is more than problematical.  To this Schleiermacher would reply that if these contentions were true, they would become the possession of spiritual Christendom with the lapse of time.  Advance always originated with one or a few.  If, however, in the end, a given portion found no place in the consciousness of generation truly evidencing their Christian life, that position would be adjudged an idiosyncrasy, a negligible quantity.  This view of Schleiermacher’s as to the Church is suggestive.  It is the undertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time.  It is somewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marks of the churches, as these have been inherited even in Protestantism from the Catholic age.