The mid-nineteenth century is a gold mine for contemporary scholars interested in American Protestant ecclesiology. There one will find the extensive writings of John Nevin who came to the notice of the theological world with The Anxious Bench, a critique of the ""quackery"" of Protestant revivalism. Influenced by a critical appropriation of cutting-edge contemporary German theology, he came to believe that the church was not ""invisible,"" but the visible manifestation of Jesus Christs incarnate life. Christians were to pursue unity, not in external institutional arrangements, but as unity...