^ 5 •^ 1 -^ 1 4 I «**♦ i^ ^5 |2q "a : ( ^ ^ "O c (0 : 1 ; 1 «^ o CO : i •25 Eh ^ O S2 i ^^ {z; >^ ^ »* M -Q 5 •>- \> 1 *^ rt "D •S s 1 1 PM (U .f^ fe J %*^ "c ^ ^ ^ O ^ Q. ^ >* ^ #) 5CC :-^^^^ECTUIIE. 151 that covenant, — it being not our act, primarily, and not merely signifying consecration, but it is the act of (tocI, sealing his promise and constituting a memorial on his part, and on the part of the parents and child. The connection of children with their parents, for good or ill, we see to be as old as the parental and filial relations. It was specially recognised at the call, of Abraham to be the founder of the church of believers in all ages of the world. A special re-appointment by Christ of this covenant relation, and the use of the initiating seal for the time being, we suppose would have been as superfluous, as would have been the re-publication by Christ of the commandment to keep holy one seventh part of time. The«raention of the baptism of households by the apostles falls in naturally with our belief and confirms it. Nov/, upon such things as these, relating to rites and forms, evangelical Christians difier, and separate into sects, each of them, however, professing to be animated by a higher motive than to promote its own peculiari- ties ; but being persuaded that the conversion of the world to God, through -the propitiation for sin, can best be efiected, so far as they are concerned, by their being respectively employed under their several forms of church order. That Congregationalism is perfectly adapted to the 152- PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. highest state of human society, and is an adequate means to bring society into that state, we see in the early history of New England, its schools, colleges, churches, ministry, benevolent associations, the arts and sciences, and all that makes life happy. " The gold of that land is good ; there is bdellium and the onyx stone." God brought the puritans here, and has wrought out by means of them the problem of man's capacity for self government in religion. If any in- quire, what is the moral and religious influence of Congregationalism compared with other systems, we have only to mention, Neiv England, where it has had its perfect work. With that result we are so far satis- fied that we are willing to see rising communities, in our own and other lands,»make trial of this system. Our New England Congregational Churches, with their fruits, stand before the world as an illustration of the practicability and safety of entrusting religious author- ity in the hands of the people themselves. We have less than two thousand Congregational Churches in the whole United States, including both Trinitarian and Unitarian Congre^ationalists, the latter having about three hundred churches, while the Presbyterians have four thousand churches, the Regular Baptists eight thousand, and the Methodists twelve thousand. If it be said that if the Pilgrim Fathers had happened to be of any other denomination. New England might have been all which it now is, we answer, It wa'' in DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. * 153 order to be Congrega+^''^i^^ lists that they came here , Congregationalism brought them here; it formed their institutions. It was because they lived on the pulse and water of Congregationalism that tliey thrived more than all they which did eat of the king's meat. Congregationalism as illustrated by them, stands ready to be adopted by other communities as fast as- circum- stances call for it. Our numerical disproportion ought to prevent us from adopting the narrow minded delu- sion that we are anything more than an important element in a great system of human society, while w^e cannot but feel grateful that God has, by these New^ England institutions, demonstrated the inherent excel- lence of the Congregational system. Having alluded to the reasons why we differ from the Episcopalians, and also from the Independency of the Baptists, and from the latter also wath respect to the mode and subjects of baptism, I will briefly allude to the discrepancies of faith between us and the Meth- odists, though in doing so I depart a little from the plan which I have proposed in the discourse, viz : to speak of doctrinal subjects last, and by themselves. But for the sake of finishing the subject of denominational dif- ferences of opinion, I will venture to refer, here, to the chief articles of faith in which the Methodists and the Congregationalists, the Arminian and the Calvinist, do not agree. Our Methodist brethren sometimes call us " partial- 154 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ists," because, as Congregationalists, Baptists, and, to so great a degree. Episcopalians, we believe in the infinite grace of God, determining to make willing and to save some of our fallen race, all of whom, if left to themselves, would have perished. The Methodist does not see how this belief allows liberty to man, and how it is consistent with offering salvation fully and freely to every human being. These offers, however, we all make as much as they ; as our English Baptist brother, Andrew Fuller, whose system of divinity is esteemed by us second only to that of Jonathan Edwards, has shown for us in his Treatise on the Freeness of the Gospel. We believe in the foreordination of every thing which ever comes to pass, even the actions of men and angels, and thus we rejoice that we have a God whose perfect administration can never be disturbed by any contingency, or by an event so small as not to have been contemplated and pre-arranged. While we be- lieve this, we are not fatalists ; for we are equally strenuous in our belief that the fore-knowledge of God, and his perfect control of his creatures, are not his misfortune, incapacitating him from having a moral government ; but, on the contrary, that men are as re- sponsible and accountable as though there were no divine foreknowledge. If we are asked how we recon- cile such contradictory propositions, we answer, They do not fall out,, and so we have no need to reconcile DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 155 them. They live together peaceably in our hearts, except when any are disposed to provoke them against each other. As our Methodist brethren accept the two classes of truths, relating to the human and the divine natures of Christ, and heed no upbraiding for incon- sistency, so we accept the parallel truths of man's free agency and of sovereign grace, both as to the begin- ning of the Christian life, and perseverance in it to the end; and we do not undertake to explain how the two things are consistent with each other. When we read the very severe strictures of those great and good men, the Wesleys, against our belief on these points, and wonder that they could not have seen how scrip- tural and how profitable they are, we perceive some- thing of the depths in the divine wisdom in allowing these mighty men some p^nts of divergence from us, in order that they might become what they have been in England, and elsewhere, a great stimulant force in Christendom. They are, in some respects, the flying artillery in the sacramental host. What denomination can show greater exploits, more versatile service, and larger conquests ? Let them dilTer from us, and go, like Nahum's chariots, through the west, and over the earth ; we shall follow them, (where we do not pre- cede them,) and by our diversified influence fill up that which is behind in them, for the elect's sake, which is the Church. Kow good it is now to leave these things in which 156 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES.. evangelical Christians differ, and lift our eyes to heaven, as the Methodist Whitefieid did in one of his sermons, when he appealed to Abraham by name to know whether he had any Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, or Congregationalists in heaven, and being answered, No, and asking, Whom have you there, the reply was. Christians. We are not yet in heaven, however, but in a world where we all " see as through a glass darkly." There- fore we must endeavor to serve God, and persuade men, by recommending that form of Christianity which appears to us, respectively, most accordant with scrip- ture ; at the same time remembering, that men as good and conscientious as we, who receive the one great essential truth of salvation by faith in Christ, feel persuaded that they also are substantially right in their modes and forms ; and we know that God sets the seal of his blessing upon their labors. This should temper our sectarianism. Let us also be magnanimous and forbearing toward any who may assume that they alone, of all protestants, have the true church, and the true ministry, and the true forms of worship, and the sacraments in their purity and validity ; and that all other denominations are schismatics, whose duty and safety require them to return at once into the one true fold. There are maladies which lead some to reason them- selves into the belief that they are kings, and queens, DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 157 or peers of the realm. The church of God is, in some sense, a hospital, in which we are all under treatment for our eij;ors and follies. We can learn patience and toleration one toward another, as we see how sad is the delusion which makes some think that they only, of all the members of Christ's family, are sitting on his right hand and on his left hand in his kingdom. That sinful woman at the well of Samaria is a type of every prelatical church, which insists thai in their mountain we must worship the father. The reproof and instruc- tion which she received from Christ, some, who are, nevertheless, we doubt not, Christians, are slow to un- derstand. And who are Christians ? Christians, according to an Apostolic definition, are " those who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours." If a man 'wishes to know what he must do to be saved, and goes to a Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, or Congregationalist minister or Chris- tian, they will each tell him, for substance, that which will lead him to pay divine honors to Jesus Christ. If he kneels in prayer with them, they will pray to Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. Let him sing with them, and they will use hymns in accordance with that new song which is sung before the throne. This is what we believe to be meant by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours. It is rendering divine worship to Jesus Christ as the 14 168 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Redeemer of men. In speaking upon this great theme, I choose to step upon that broad platform where I can stand side by side with those Episcopal, Bap- tist, and Methodist brethren, who, with all their dis- crepancies, adopt the language of Paul in the text. But even Paul made proper account of subordinate questions. When they came and asked him whether it was right to eat that which had been laid before an idol, and was then exposed for sale in the market, he did not reply, " I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified," but he gave suitable answers to such inquiries. It would be a cause of gratitude to God if we could say that evangelical Christians of different denomina- tions do not contend for their forms of order and worship as their chief concern. Some, however, in all denominations, the Congregational not excepted, hold and urge extreme views, both as to doctrine and order. We may be as bigoted in insisting upon " no forms," as others are who insist upon their forms and order as essential to a standing in the Chris- tian church, and in the Christian ministry. And as to the points of doctrine in which evangelical Christians differ, while we all have our strong preferences, and should not yield what we deem a principle, the dissent of confessedly good men, whom God accepts and honors, should make us charitable and liberal in our feelings, and prevent us from unnecessarily magnify- PR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 159 ing the things in which we differ. For if there be in us one thingr more than another which is offensive to our common Lord and Master, it must be- a preten- tious and lofty carriage toward other denominations of Christians whom, notwithstanding the signal manner in which God has owned and blessed them, we dis- franchise, and then, with a due amount of admoni- tion and warning, notify, that our doors stand open to receive them. Bold pretensions to the only divine pa- tent right in religious ordinances have their effect upon a certain class of minds, and may lead them, by a sort of intimidation, to join another communion; but these men becoming, as they generally do, tenfold more intensely sectarian than those who may have been born in the sect, only help to make the denom- ination which they infest, Ishmaelitish toward the whole Israel of God. As to certain doctrinal points on which true Chris- tians differ, let us each be fully persuaded in his own mind, and walk according to the light which we en- joy , but it was a shrewd stroke in the author of the Paradise Lost, to say that fallen angels, as one of their occupations, debated the subjects of " Fixed fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute ; And found no end in wandering mazes lost." But a thorough training for the work of the ministry pre-supposes a knowledge of the constitution of the 160 PITTS-STREET CFIAPEL LECTURE . human mind, with which we are to deal ; and if one can popularize metaphysics in his preaching, and by his skilful- use of moral science, make men feel that he is revealing their consciousness, he having, moreover, the higher qualification — that unction which the Holy Spirit alone imparts, he will, with the blessing of God, be eminently acceptable and useful. But if he makes the theological discrepancies of evangelical denomi- nations needlessly prominent, and uses his acquisitions chiefly to illustrate and enforce his peculiar views, he needs to follow Paul out of the school of Gamaliel, into the school of that Savior whose love to men shed abroad in the heart is better than to " understand all mysteries and all knowledge," and which alone keeps us from becoming '' as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." As the Apostle gloried in his infirmities, let us, as Congregationalists, glory that we do not often incur the reproach of sectarianism in regard to our denominational order. Some among us feel that this is an infirmity, and that we ought to be aggres- sive, insist more on our anti-prelatical sentiments, and commend our denominational views more earnestly to the people. But Congregationalism consists so essen- tially in the absence of what we call human inven- tions, that it is difficult to make it aggressive. The only way in which we can be aggressive, is, to debate the scripturalness or expediency of the denomina- tional tenets held by other sects. This we can do as DR. ADAMS^ LECTURE. IGl often as they are exalted so as to reflect, or to cast dis- credit, upon ourselves. If Christian brethren believe that different orders in the ministry and stated forms of worship are not forbidden in the Word of God, we rejoice in their liberty to use them ; if they say that these things are enjoined, we still yield them the same liberty of conscience which we claim in main- taining the contrary ; but, when they tell us that our ordinances are invalid, and our ministry unscriptural, they remind us of the house of bondage, where our fathers suffered under these same assumptions, and from which God brought them to this good land, and gave them institutions so free as to allow men full liberty of conscience and speech, even to the setting forth of such arrogant claims. May the time never come when we shall need to have open and general conflict with these natural enemies and invaders of Congregational liberty. We have heavy ordnance, and large equipments, as the history of non-conform- ity shows ; but we prefer to see the vine trailing itself over the bastions, and, as in the windows of old castles, the olive trefe and myrtles filling up the embra- sures which look toward these aggressors. We pray for peace and charity between ourselves and other denominations, and we would not offensively obtrude our peculiarities. I gladly proceed to speak of the more important part of the subject assigned for this discourse, being willing that all should know the rela- 14* 1()2 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. tive importance which we, as Congregationalists, attach to things which are essential, and to those which are not essential, to salvation. Having disposed, therefore, of the denominational part of my theme, I proceed to speak of Trinita- RiANisM, which is the other and more important part of the subject assigned to me. I begin the doctrinal part of the discourse by sayings first of all. We have a Bible, which we regard and treat as a revelation from heaven. Here we have a fast anchorage ground. Not many years ago, one Eu- ropean nation and another, who had suffered under monarchical laws, cried out for a written constitution, and the battle cry was, " Written Constitution." ]Men feel safe only, when they have such an instru- ment, ordained and published, as the exposition of their duties, .defining the rights and powers of the government, and constituting the basis of judicial acts We have such a written constitution. It is to us the Word of God. We do not select parts of it, and say that these are inspired, and the rest is of no authority. As we do not wish to speculate about the actions and words of Christ, whether this were divine, and ihis hu- man, but take him as an undivided Christ and Savior, so w^e do not winnow the Bible, but take it altogether — just as we take Christ in another sense, — as the " Word " of God. We settle the question of its in- spiration in this w^ay. We take the Old Testament 163 Canon, for example, as it existed in the time of Christ, and we say, Jesus Christ came as a teacher of religion. The first thing which a teacher looks to, is the books which, as a teacher, he is to use. When and where did Jesus Christ speak one word of abrogation, emen- dation, or even criticism, with regard to the Old Tes- tament Scriptures ? No such word ever fell from his lips. On the contrary, he quoted them with approba- tion, and directed his hearers to search the Scriptm'es, saying, " for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me." He did not seek to disabuse his hearers of their belief that eternal life was to be found in these Scriptures ; nor did he point out parts of them which were of less authority than others, nor did he caution his hearers against a too implicit belief of the whole. " Think not," he said, " that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets ; 1 am not come to destroy but to fulfil." He did not bestow qualified praise upon the Old Testament, as being venerable but somewhat antiquated, worthy of respect and love for Vv4iat it had been, and still useful if judiciously consulted, but soon to be displaced by the New Testament; but, "till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle," he declared, " should in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." As there are things in what is called " the law and the prophets," which, upon every interpretation, reach to the end of time, this proverbial expression of the Savior will be 164 PIl^'SSTREET CHAPEL LECTURES. literally fulfilled. The Apostle Peter who, on the mount of transfiguration, heard a voice from heaven attesting the Messiahship of Christ, and saw and heard the preternatural things which then and there trans- pired, tells us, that, in comparison even with such reve- lations, " we have a more sure Avord of prophecy ; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. — For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." So that we take the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, from the hands of Jesus Christ himself, as the Word of God. As to the New Testament, if the Apostles were honest men, as we believe them to have been, this is all that we need to satisfy us of their inspiration ; for they claim to be inspired, and they suffered and died in attestation of their claim. As to the amount of their inspiration, the Savior promised them that the Holy Spirit should guide them into all truth. We, therefore, have a Bible which we receive as implicitly as if we, like Moses and the Prophets, should receive direct communications from heaven. We ap- ply the same rules of interpretation to the Bible which we use in interpreting other writings, and having as- certained what is declared, we believe it, whether it be level to our eomprehension, or infinitely beyond it DR. ADAMS' LKCTURE. 165 AVe do not make man and his powers of understand- ing, the standard and measure by which we decide what the nature of God should be ; we do no-t make our moral sentiments, nor our instincts, nor our rela- tionships, a rule for the divine administration ; but we bring all our powers and faculties to the work of in- terpreting what the Bible teaches ; here we use our reason; this is its province. Then, if the Bible teaches us that divine attributes, names, works, and worsliip, are ascribed to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, if all the usual proofs of distinct personal existence demonstrate the equal deity of Three, and if at the same time the Bible asserts, with equal clear- ness, that there is but one God, we believe these two truths — that there is one God, and that there is a threefold distinction in his nature. Our predisposition as inquirers in common with all men, would lead us not to adopt this mystery respecting the Godhead, this inexplicable enigma, preferring nat- urally to receive things which lay the smallest tax on faith. But we remember the reply of the good bishop to the man who said that he had resolved not to be- lieve anything which he could not understand. The bishop said, " Your creed, then, will be the shortest of any which I ever knew." All the proofs which are usually adduced to show that Christ asserted his inferiority to the Father, con- firm and illustrate our belief that the Savior, having 166 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. two distinct natures in one person, said things which could be true of only one nature. There is, in our view, as much, and the same, logical proof that Christ was not a man, as that he was not divine ; and we might ask, Why not doubt and deny that he had a hu- man nature, when we hear him say, " Before Abraham was, I am " ? '' And no man hath ascended up into heaven, but he which came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." " What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? " " All things were made by Ixim, and with- out him was not anything made that was made," thus making him identical with Him who " in the begin- ning created the heavens and the earth," and who said, " Let there be light ; and there was light." Instead of setting aside such proofs of Christ's deity, we might, with equal reason, say that Christ's human nature was a fiction, adopting something like the the- ory of the Docetoe, a sect to whom John refers in the first verses of his first epistle, and who (derived their name from a Greek word, signifying to see^n, or to ap- pear, because they taught that Christ had only acted and suffered in appearance. We hold to the coexist- ence in Christ of two natures, without mixture or con- fusion, and therefore, necessarily, to a double conscious- ness ; and we believe in his dependence and limited knowledge, as we do in his hunger and thirst, his weari- ness, his prayers, his sorrows, his friendships, his agony DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 167 of mind and body. The same lips uttered words dic- tated by these things, as well as those which proceeded from his remembrance of "the glory which he had with the Father before the world was." If we are told that he may have been preexistent, and yet not be divine, we say, " Every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God." The Most High, in his controversy with idolaters in the Old Testament, makes this the incontrovertible proof of his Godhead, that he alone made the heavens and the earth ; — "that stretcheth forth the heavens alone ; that spreadeth abroad the earth by'myself; "* thus emphatically ex- cluding the idea of delegated power in the work of creation. Moreover, this mysterious being declares that he is to sit as Judge with all the human race be- fore him, and that he will separate them one from an- other, and pronounce the final sentence upon them. It is a greater tax on our faith to believe that a crea- ture does this, that a creature " made all things," and that " by him do all things consist," than that the " Word was with God, and the Word was God." We can agree to consider this subject as but imper fectly revealed ; but to say that the divine attributes of Omnipotence and Omniscience can be delegated to a creature, is far more of a stumbling-block to us. This is not above reason, but contrary to reason ; but when * Isaiah xliv. 24. Job ix. 8, etc. 168 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the Bible asserts that " the Word was with God, anu the Word was God," this belongs to a region of truths far above us, and which we have never pene- trated, viz : the mode of the divine existence. If Christ made all things, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, if all things were created by him, or for him, he is our Maker. But our Maker is surely our God ; and therefore we give divine worship to Christ. But we find another still to whom divine attributes are attributed, viz., The Holy Ghost. The only sin which is unpardonable is blasphemy against Him. If He be merely divine influence, we do not know, and man cannot define, what the unpardonable sin is ; therefore it cannot be committed ; for where there is no law, there is no transgression. We are free to say that before we believed in the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit, we had no intelligible idea of the unpardonable sin. Now we can understand it. He is a person. He is a divine person. He is the great administrator in the kingdom of grace, applying the work of Christ to the hearts of men, having interc(;urse with them for this purpose. He who deliberately speaks words of contumely against this Sacred Person, sins against the last and most affecting effort of reme- dial mercy ; and not only by the state of mind which led him to do if, has he placed himself beyond hope of recovery, but he falls under a judicial act of con- DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 169 demnation. To say that we may blaspheme the Father and the Son, and be forgiven, but if we blaspheme some influence of either of them, we cannot be forgiven, does greater violence to our understandings than to receive that which we deem the evidences of the per- sonal existence and deity of the Holy Spirit. That he is a person, we moreover learfi from the Savior's words, in which he tells his disciples that if he himself should not go away, the Comforter would not come unto them. If the Holy Spirit is merely divine influence, how the Savior's being in the world should keep divine influence out of it, especially as Christ is the light of the world, we are at a loss to understand. But if the Holy Spirit be a divine person, having an equal share with Christ in the work of redemption, and having a special office assigned to him, viz., to convince and convert men, as the Savior's office was to suffer and die for sin, we can see why the Savior should depart and give place to him. But who is this that is capable of being a successor to Christ ? Who can finish such a work as that which the Re- deemer began ? Who is it that is competent to move upon the heart of every human being, influence his will, and transform him into the image of God ? Baptism is administered in his name, equally with that of the Father and of the Son. We are not bap- tised in the name of God, and of the Messiah, and of di- vine influences ; and the apostolic benediction is not so 15 170 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. expressed. When we read that "Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, into a mountain apart," we do not hesitate to believe in three persons. We cannot be- lieve that the great seal of the Christian religion. Bap- tism, and the Christian Benediction associate the name of a created being, and of an attribute, with the name of God. We hear the Holy Ghost speaking : " Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work where- unto I have appointed them." He is represented as the author of the Jewish ritual : " The Holy Ghost this, signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest." It is related as remark- able that certain of John's disciples had not heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. But they could not have been baptised by John and not have known that there was such a thing as " divine influence," and therefore this could not have been all which was signi- fied by the name, " Holy Ghost," in that connection. So we come to the conclusion that there are Three to whom divine attributes, names, w^orks, and worship, are ascribed, and we are left to choose whether to be- lieve that there are Three Gods, or that the One God exists with a three-fold distinction in his nature. For, to set aside all the plain proofs that supreme deity is ascribed to Three, on the ground that we dread the inference which must follow, is to make ourselves like the cotemporaries of Galileo who would not look through his telescope, lest their discoveries should con- DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 171 found their theories. Believing that there is but One God, we adopt the belief forced upon us by our inter- pretation of Scripture, that the One God has a plural nature. We believe in the Divine Unity, in opposition to the belief that there are more Gods than one ; so that " the doctrine of the Trinity" is a form of stating the collected facts concerning the mode of the divine existence. But " the word Trinity is not in the Bible," and it has been said, " If the very words which are necessary to express the doctrine are not in the scriptures, how can we suppose the doctrine itself to be there ? " The expressions, " Omniscience," " Unity of God," " Sacrament," and many other conventional terms are not in the Bible. The word. Trinity, is no more neces- sary to the doctrine itself than the expression, " com- munion of saints", is necessary to the existence of Christian fellowship. These terms prevent circumlo- cution, and are merely convenient. " But Christ said, ' My Father is greater than I.' " None but a being who, in some sense, " thought it not robbery to be equal with God," would be so pre- sumptuous as thus to make a comparison of himself w^ith the Most High. Imagine Moses saying to the children of Israel as he came down from the mount, or even Gabriel saying to Mary, " My Father is greater than I." We can free ourselves from the feeling that there is assumption in those woids of Jesus, or that 172 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. He forgot himself, or was unduly elated, or used an expression which, though seemingly in deprecation of too great reverence for himself, was really irreverent, only by believing that his disciples were liable to for- get, amidst the impressions which his power and love had made on their hearts, that he was acting . in a subordinate capacity, and that they needed to feel that their Savior's personal presence was not the greatest and best thing for them ; that the Father was engaged in the work of redemption and acted as its head, and that the Holy Spirit also must come and do his part of the divine work. By such an interpretation alone can we see even a common reverence for God, and an ordinary sense of propriety, (with submission be it spoken,) in the words, " My Father is greater than I." Acting, even in His complex nature, in a subordinate capacity, the words are natural and appropriate ; but if he were a mere man, no wonder that some call him fallible, if he could for one moment have com- pared himself with the Infinite One. "We read, " No man knoweth who the Son is but the Father ; and no man knoweth who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.^' Now as we do know in some sense of the term, and according to the measure of the human un- derstanding, who God is, so we may know many things which are revealed concerning Christ ; but, we learn from this passage that there are mysteries in DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 173 Christ'3 nature which are not fathomed, except by the Father ; they are compared to the mysteries in the na- ture of the Father. Equally astonishing, Christ repre- sents himself as alone capable of knowii^ the Father. Such- is the mystery, concerning which Paul prayed for " as many as had not seen his face in the flesh," " that their hearts might be comforted, being knit to- gether in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mys- tery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ." It is interesting to know that those denominations who believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible as a revelation from God, find in it the doctrine of a threefold personal distinction in the Godhead. And those denominations who reject the plenary inspira- tion of the Bible, do not find that doctrine there. I mention this as a coincidence worthy of notice. The two things, plenary inspiration of the Word of God, and the Deity of Christ, usually stand or fall together. There are some practical views of this subject which will be considered in their place. I proceed now to speak of Future Retribution. We bow implicitly to the disclosures of the Bible, as we find that the punishment of the wicked is to be without end. We cannot tell, of ourselves, what sin deserves. We listen, implicitly, to the revelation of the Most High on that subject. We believe in end- less future punishment, not because of natural timidi- 15* 174 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ty, or superstitious fear, nor because our teachers so instruct us. We have an average share of intelli- gence and cultivation, are no better and no worse than our neighbors. We are as capable by nature of defying the Almighty, we are as bold to offend him, and to rush on the thick bosses of his buckler, as other sinners. Some think that we must have direful views of God to believe in endless future punishment, that he must seem to us a tyrant, a " Draco, whose laws were written with blood ", whereas to them God ap- pears merciful and benign. But the infinite love of God is one of the strongest considerations in our minds with regard to future punishment; for to us that love finds its highest manifestation in the ^ft of a Savior, to make propitiation for our sins. In our ransom we see our ruin. The love of Christ, leading to his sufferings and death for sin, do more than any- thing else to persuade us that the wages of sin is death ; that there is a loss of the soul which nothing can prevent but the sacrifice on Calvary. That such a sacrifice should be made, by the incarnation and the expiatory offering of the Word who was with God and was God, that the Holy Spirit should come to ap- ply it in the hearts of men, a ministry of reconciliation be appointed, whose great commission is to say, " As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead. Be ye reconciled to God;" and then that men having rejected, or which is equivalent, having 175 neglected, this Savior, should go to be chastised and disciplined out of their sins, and that, too, notwith- standing all our sufferings, mingled with mercy, here, and all the warnings and threatenings of the Bible, and thus reach heaven by their own sufferings, is to make the love of God a failure, and punishment to be the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. That the great propitiation for sin should thus come to nought, and prison discipline prove the grand instru- ment of salvation, excites the question why this should not have been resorted to at first, as the most natural, and certainly as, in the view of some it will prove, the most effectual way of reformation. That the infinite love of God will thus be made superfluous, and that any of our race will reach heaven through the discip- line of hell, to reflect on its enormous woes as the means of their deliverance, making the cross of Christ of none effect, is as contrary to our apprehension of what is suitable and reasonable as it is to the word of God. So that if any come to us and say, " God is love, and therefore he will not punish forever," we say, "Herein is love," pointing them to the cross; we take our place there, and, knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men. Our friends who differ from us think that a belief in the eternity of future punish- ment must make us unhappy. They forget that the idea of future punishment is associated in our minds with redemption from it, that salvation is the burden 176 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. of our preaching, that we go to the vilest of men, fol- lowing even the felon to the scaffold, and thus to the last hour of every sinner's life we say, " For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him." As to the heathen, we shall either find them in heaven, or be satisfied with the reason why they are not there. In the meantime, we are obeying the last command of the ascending Savior with the reason annexed, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." We find in the Bible, therefore, that every one who fails to accept pardon through faith in the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God, will have no probation after death. The Son of God, the Word made flesh, under the name of Jesus, offers up himself, the presence of the divine nature in his person giving infinite worth and efficacy to his sacrifice. This is an atonement for sin, stated in this most simple way : " Christ died for us ; " " to give his life a ransom for many ; " " to be a propitiation through faith in his blood ; " " he died for all ; " " Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," and other expressions in great number and variety. The death of Christ is proposed to men as the ground on which God can be just, and justify DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 177 him that believeth in Jesus. Repentance and the remis- sion of sins are to be preached in his name among all nations. We do not understand why an atone- ment like this was made, rather than any other ; we find it set forth, and urged upon us, as that alone which delivers us from the wrath to come. And we cannot see why it is unjust, or cruel, that we, for whom such infinite condescension and such a sacrifice took place, should, upon refusing to accept it, suffer such consequences as God in his wisdom shall appoint. " God so loved the world that He gave His only be- gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." There is far more prominence given to love than to fear in our system of faith. Its great central truth is, love to the guilty. But he has no experience or obser- vation who does not know that in every form of gov- ernment, private or public, fear is an important and indispensable element ; it has its place ; that place is not in precedence of everything else, for then we infer despotism in the government. But God appeals to -the principle of fear in governing us, and fear auickens love and obedience even in the purest relations of life. The great inducements to faith* in Christ which God himself presents, are addressed to our love of happi- ness and to our fears of misery, and he who proposes to leave out fear in religion is as unscriptural as he is forgetful of our natural instincts. 178 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. While the love of God, in the gift of a Savioi, sheds its light and glory over the whole system of re- vealed truth, we believe that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is also the God of the Old Testament, with all that is there related of him as vindictive and implacable toward the incorrigibly wicked. There has been no change in the divine character since the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the extirpation of the Cananites. "Our God is a consuming fire." "It is" still "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." The Savior, himself, is all which the Old Testament represents God to be, in his final treatment of wicked men. " For the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." We believe that no language can describe, no mind can conceive the punishment which sin deserves, and which awaits us if we reject the Gospel, and refuse to repent. Some of President Edwards' well-known sermons express our general views upon this subject;^ but neither they, nor any other descriptions, do justice to the dread reality. To one who was finding fault with the terrible language in some of Richard Bax- ter's works on this theme, a good man said, " One word of damnation from the lips of Christ is more than a thousand of Mr. Baxter's." We believe that DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 179 God will punish sin in a way corresponding to the in- finite wonders of his love and grace in redemption; and that as there are said to be depths in the ocean corresponding to the height of mountains, so they who neglect Christ and continue in sin, will endure a pun- ishment corresponding to the gi'eatness of the salva- tion which was provided for them. We believe that the justice of God will be as clearly and fully illustrated as his love, and that the two will lay a foundation for the confidence and joy of the holy uni- verse, in whose government the effdless punishment of sin will hold an important place. Let it be fully understood, that our belief in the future, endless pun- ishment of all who reject salvation by Christ is one important element in our love and gratitude to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, for the stupendous work of redemption, and that it is the occasion of love and zeal, which should be more by a hundred fold, for the souls of our fellow men. We find that the Bible has, in all ages of the world, made certain impressions on the vast majority of its readers ; the cultivated, the gentle, the humane, the benevolent, the learned as well as the unlearned ; and we are accustomed to supj^se that if God has given a revelation to man, its meaning would lie on its surface, as we find is the case in all written commu- nications which are intended to be understood ; so that the sense which is generally received from age to age 180 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. by common readers of the Bible, is and must be true. Now we perceive that mankind at large, who receive the Bible implicitly as the word of God, find there that God will punish the incorrigibly wicked without end. We say. Who invented this terrible truth ? It is not agreeable to our natural feelings. Our reason would not have suggested it. Were it a palpable error, time, which has reformed many errors and ex- ploded others, surely would have consigned this long ago to the moles and the bats, if it had no foundation in the Bible. Y^ there were never so many who be- lieved it as at the present day ; and we are therefore confirmed in the belief derived from the impressions which the Bible makes upon us, that there is no for- giveness after death. These things I mention chiefly to illustrate the manner in which evangelical Chris- tians of all denominations receive and interpret the word of God. The mode of the divine existence, and the future eternal punishment of the wicked, are tw^o things which make large demands on faith. We, therefore, believe, without comprehending the subjects of our faith, in these two mysteries, as we all do with regard to the union of soul and body, the final resur- rection, and the ultimate truths in the various depart- ments of nature. If one says here. How can three be one and one three ? we say, that God cannot, of course, be three in the same sense in which he is one, nor is he one in the DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 181 same sense in which he is three. But we are not so presumptuous as to sit as teachers to our fellow mor- tals, with regard to that of which, like them, we know nothing. The only source from which we can derive knowledge concerning God, is equally in their posses- sion as in ours ; and while we disclaim any superiority to them, they may not properly reproach us with believ- ing absurdities, or cleaving to exploded errors. There are immeasurably less difficulties with us in believing that Christ and the Holy Spirit are divine, than in the opposite theory ; and believing in their divinity, the doc- trine of the Trinity is the only relief from believing in three Gods. If it be replied, that this is impossible in the nature of things, we might be satisfied to make the reply which our late distinguished statesman and fellow citizen made to a friend who met him at the door of an Episcopal church, and rallied him on wor- shiping at a place where the doctrine of three in one was inculcated. The reply was, " Neither you nor I understand the arithmetic of heaven."* * Having used this anecdote after much hesitation, and apprehending that it might seem like resorting to a great name among mei^or support to divine truth, I find it necessary, for certain reasons, to go farther, and add tlie following ; — which, liowever, I still would not do, if the point were merely the assent of any distinguished man to a controverted doc- trine of the Bible. Since this sermon was preached, I have obtained authentic informa- tion respecting this anecdote. A distinguished clergyman writes to me u answer to my inquiry, as folloM'S : — 16 182 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTUITES. The greatest intellect is as infantile in its capacity to understand the " great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," as a child, and therefore the mystery owes no man any obligation for acceding to it ; nor can great names confirm or impeach it. I quote this remark, therefore, only to say, in accord- ance with it, that it becomes us not to pronounce con- fidently as to the impossibility of there being a three- fold distinction in the one God. But I will endeavor soon to commend the subject to your approbation, and not leave it as a cold and barren abstraction. We are inquired of whether a man would punish his child forever, and whether the human mind does not revolt from the idea of endless misery, and whether we have read the Evangelical Baptist John Foster's objections to Endless Punishment. We had read the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew before we read Mr. Foster's views, and we have read that chapter since, with other passages of the Savior's discourses which relate to future retributions. We feel ourselves to be the persons to whom, in common with our fellow sin- *' Dining with Mr. Webster two months before his death, I remarked to him that I had been informed of an event which I wished him to con- tradict, modify, or confirm. The statement was, that a gentleman met him one day as he was coming out of an Episcopal church, and accosted him thus : ' Tlien you attend that church 1 ' ' Sometimes/ ' So you believe that three and one are the same thing 1' '1 believe. Sir,' said Mr. Webster; ' that neither you nor I understand the arithmetic of heaven.' — ' You have it,' said Mr. Webster [to my informant,] ' as it occurred.' " DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 183 ners, these warnings of future endless retribution are addressed ; and we more than question the propriety of our sitting in judgment on the penalties threatened against our transgressions. The eternity of future punishment is no more agi-eeable and no more intelli- gible to us than to others. But we prefer that God should be law-giver and judge, remembering that transgressors, when they suffer the penalty of their sins, are apt to feel that it violates their sense of pro- priety, and goes against many of their instinctive feel- ings ; for they feel sure that they never would treat a child as the law treats them. We find that a parent may do things ^n his government and discipline which the teacher of .a school 'cannot safely adopt ; that the teacher of a school can act on some principles which are not practicable in the government of a man-of-war, an army, a city, or a nation ; in a word, that as the sphere of authority widens, analogies sought between one and another of them, fail. We forbear, therefore, to make our moral sentiments the source of information concerning God and his government, but we would rather bring them to the word of God for correction and instruction, accepting the great Protestant maxim that the Scriptures are the only and the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice. So long, therefore, as we receive the Bible as an authoritative standard of truth, we are compelled to receive the doctrine of future endless ret- ribution, as the vast majority of devout persons have received it in all ages of the world. 184 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Injustice would be done to the system of Evan- gelical belief, if I should rest here, and leave the im- pression that our faith is a heartless assent to an all- constraining power, requiring blind submission to its disclosures. While some of the principal doctrines of our faith are above reason, I shall be happy to show that not only are they not against reason, but being accepted as matters of pure revelation, they commend themselves to our consciences and hearts. This sys- tem stimulates and develops the powers of the human mind, and brings forth all the best a*ffections of the human soul. Our religion does not begin with requiring us to be- lieve that three can be one and one three, or that a part of mankind will suffer without end for their sins. The way in which we have generally arrived at a full and settled persuasion concerning our doctrine is, by a discovery of the infinite love of God to us in the way of salvation, so that we are led to say with the Apostle John, " And we have known and believed the love which God hath toward us." The love of God is the sun in our system of truth. If others rejoice in God as their heavenly father, and celebrate his love as the great theme of religion, we have proofs and illustra- tions of that love which make our praises surpass theirs. It reminds us of the Oratorio of the Messiah compared with Pope's Universal Prayer. Our great theme is, " For God so loved the world that he gave DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 185 his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth' in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." We do not teach, do not believe, that God was implacable towards us, and that the Son of God int^posed and prevailed upon him to accept Him as a substitute for us ; but, on the contrary, that redemption began with* the Father as well as with the Son; that it was a plan of infinite mercy to save sinners, and not an agreement to be appeased and satisfied. Our hymn writers and orators dramatize the work of redemption, and say many things with a poetic license in a fervent state of mind, which an ordinary degree of literary discernment and candor, nevertheless, finds it easy to distinguish from a strictly accurate theological state- ment. An individual is made to feel that all is not right between himself and God. It is not so much that he dreads future punishment, though he has good war- rant, both in reason and in Scripture, for being moved with fear to prepare an ark, to the saving of his house ; but he is dissatisfied with himself ; he wishes to have a sense of reconciliation and peace with God. He goes to an evangelical minister and tells him his tale of sorrow. Among other things, he says, "I was educated in an entire unbelief of your faith ; was always taught that ' the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the Bible ' ; that repentance is sufficient for 16* 18G PITTS-STEEET CHAPEL LECTURES. salvation ; but I am not satisfied. What must I do to be saved ? " No one who has himself experienced the power of religion, would begin by teaching this enquirer the doc- trine of the Trinity. He would rather direct him to dismiss his troubled thoughts about that mystery, and he would say to him. My friend, you need that which God has appointed for you, namely, some other right- eousness than your own, as the ground of pardon and acceptance with God. You are a sinner, and are under condemnation for your sins ; by nature a child of wrath, even as others. But God has so loved you, even in your rebellion and ill desert, as to give the Savior to be, by his sufferings and death, a substitute for your punishment. He becomes your righteousness, or, the ground and reason of your deliverance from con- demnation. The only condition required of you is, that you believe with your heart, and accept, this offered way of being pardoned and reconciled to God. Con- sider such words as these : Christ " was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification." " He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed." Then the way to avail yourself of this righteousness is declared in such words as these : '' Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 187 our Lord Jesus Christ." " There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." " He that believeth shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." You need, first of all, to be forgiven ; you must apply for pardon to Him who can be just and justify him that believeth in Jesus ; not him that merely repenteth — but " him that believ- eth in Jesus." The inquirer, then, believes that the way which God has ordained for sinners to be recon- •ciled to him is through the sufferings and death of the Savior, constituting an equivalent for the punishment of the sins of the whole world. All that the Bible says about the Savior's death, his blood, his cross, all the types in the sacrifices, and the names of Christ ful- filling them, "Lamb of God," "High Priest," "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all," satisfy him that the atoning death of Christ is the appointed ground of acceptance with God. He then sees, more than ever, what a sinner he is, and how great the enor- mity of sin must be to have required such a sacrifice ; and the love of God toward him, and the thought of Christ as dying for him, fills him with true sorrow for his sins such as he never felt before ; for repentance is the sorrow of love; we never repent toward any one till some feeling of interest in him or love toward him, touches the heart. Nothing has this effect compared with the thought of Christ dying for our sins. Now the inquirer accepts Christ as he finds him to be offered 188 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. in the gospel, and doing so there takes place in him at the time, that change, by the Holy Spirit, of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, when he said, " Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." But his act of believing was itself the work of the Holy Spirit ; " for by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves ; it is the gift of God." This change is that regeneration by which we have spiritual perceptions, and feelings, and tastes ; and he that ex- periences it, we say, will certainly persevere to the end and be saved. " Being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Christ." It is that part of redemp- tion which the Holy Spirit performs in our souls as a consequence of the atonement by Christ ; " in whom after that ye believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inherit- ,ance until the redemption of the purchased possession." In our mental philosophy, in the whole range of human experience, we never find anything to be compared with the knowledge of ourselves, the self control, the disclosure of new objects of spiritual affection and pur- suit, the inward peace and satisfaction, which flow from this change which is connected with the one act of saving faith in the Redeemer. " If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away ; behold all things are become new." A friend who cannot understand how three can be one DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 189 and one three, knowing that this new convert formerly had great perplexity on that subject, now inquires of him how he has settled that problem. I have not set- tled it, he says. All that I know is, that I have seen myself to be a lost, perishing sinner, in need of other righteousness than my own. I have found in Christ Jesus an Almighty Savior. I worship him, I have committed my soul to him ; and yet I c^n no more understand the great mystery of godliness, God mani- fest in the flesh, than I could before. I take the re- vealed facts concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I believ-e them, and am willing to believe concerning the unsearchable God anything which he is pleased to reveal ; and I do not perplex myself with attempts at explanation. But one inquires whether we may not trust in the Savior's sufferings and death for sin, and still not be- lieve in his supreme deity. May not God have ap pointed his sufferings for our redemption, even if he be only a super-angelic being ? It has seemed to us that we have sometimes met those who thus received Christ as a Savior, and who, while they could not, or, on account of their religious instruction, had not received Christ in his divine na ture, nevertheless relied upon his mediation, and prayed to him. All this, it is easy to see, is theologi- cally inconsistent, for it is rendering worship to a crea- 190 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ture. To say that saving faith may not be found in connection with such inadvertency and imperfect know- ledge, would be to limit the grace of the Holy Spirit, and we might thereby break some bruised reed, Ox quench the smoking flax. But exceptional cases form no rule of duty ; we, who are capable of understand- ing how impossible, in the nature of things, it is, for a creature to •atone for sin, must, if we accept that atonement, refer it to a divine nature in Christ giving infinite worth and eflicacy to his sufferings and death. We would affectionately say to those who are greatly troubled by the doctrine of the Trinity, and* who aver, with the utmost sincerity, that they would believe it if satisfied that the Bible disclosed it, — that we seldom, if ever, find that any arrive at a belief in it by speculating about it, by reading books on the sub- ject, by discussions with their friends, or through religious controversies. The doctrine of the Trinity is, by itself, of no practical value, any more than it is to know whether there be six, or seven stars in the Pleiades. The doctrine of the Trinity is important only as systematizing for us the previously ascertained truths of the Supreme Deity of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. It is a conclusion, resulting frorn things which are gathered independently of any theory. Some wonder why the doctrine should seem so mys- terious, and even absurd, to them, when so many DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 191 whom th'ey respect and love, believe it. An able writer undertakes to explain why the Epistle to the Romans is usually regarded as very difficult. His ex- planation is applicable to our subject. He says, " Where there is wanting, in the reader's own life, an experience analogous to that of the Apostle, it is utterly unintelligible." * We must feel our personal need of that which led to the disclosure of the mys- tery in the Godhead, that is to say, the Redemption which is by Christ; then we receive the mystery. Abundant illustrations of this are to be found among us in those who once rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, but who are now members of our Evangelical churches. The way, therefore, to arrive at a belief in the Trin- ity is, not by direct efforts to reconcile the seemingly contradictory propositions which it involves, but, to ask, " What must I do to be saved ? " to comply with the directions of the Bible, which point to the suffer- ings and death of Christ as the only way of salvation ; and thus, having received the pardon of sin through his blood, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, we come to believe in the deity of Christ, and of the Spirit; and that which we call the Doctrine of the Trinity supervenes in our belief as a necessary conse- quence, and as the only way of escaping from .the belief that there are more Gods than one. * Olshausen's Commentaiy on the New Testament, lu., 463. 192 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. The theory of our evangelical faith, all must admit, is most sublime. Every one who considers it ab- stractly, if he be impartial, must say, There is at least one thing in it which it is most desirable should be true. The human mind, from the beginning, has been craving visible manifestations of the Godhead, some- thing to satisfy it that God, a Spirit, is near to us, inter- ested in human affairs, and also to know his feelings and wishes with regard to us. Hence, the various theories of incarnation, and all the numberless forms of idola- try, showing the desire in the human mind for the manifestation of God. Now, if God so exists, that in one of the mysterious distinctions of his essen- tial being he will take man's nature into union with his own, being born of a woman, and passing through all the conditions of human life, then make expia- tion for our sins, and become our Redeemer and Savior, — who will not say. Could this be possible, what more is there to be desired ? Now, this is our faith. The Word made flesh lies in the manger at Bethlehem, passes through all the stages of human life, bears our griefs, and carries our sorrows, is tempted in all points as we are, enters into all our feelings, is our forerunner through all the dark passages of life, while we know that " he is before all things and by him do all things consist," that " all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that is made." I can call him my elder brother, and y;i the 193 next breath my God ; now tell the man of sorrows my trouble, and, in a moment after, pray him, as my final Judge, to be my advocate at the world's last session. Angels, authorities and powers are subject unto him, who nevertheless says to every child of man, " Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I wdll come in unto him and sup with him and he with me." Though He will come at the end of the world with all his holy angels, he says of every believer, " And I will raise him up at the last day." The believer says of him, " Who loved me and gave himself for me." " For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." We also pray to the Holy Spirit, in whose name we were baptized, by whom we were convinced of sin and led to Christ, and whose relation to us is specially set forth by the terms, " communion " and " fellowship." We prefer particular wants to Him, ask special bles- sings of Hijm, receive spiritual mercies from Him ; in short, he is to us, as the Savior promised, •" the Com- forter," who is to abide with us forever. And while the Son and the Holy Spirit thus occupy most en- deared relations to us, the Father becomes not merely Deity, but as his own peculiar name indicates, our Father ; a name which, in such a world as this, has the more particular significance and sweetness as ex- 17 194 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. pressing a relationship to us, — not merely that of God, but of Father, — as the Savior and the Comforter each have their relations to us in the work of redemption. One word of explanation may be useful here as a relief to inquiring minds. We find that the Father is uniformly called God. We suppose that it is the di- vine arrangement in the work of human redemption that the idea and the name of God shall prominently ►associate themselves in the minds of men, with the Father, as distinguished from the Son, and the Holy Spirit, — these holding subordinate offices in the great plan. Thus associating the idea and name of God specially with the Father, we are saved the necessity of trying to combine the Three in our thoughts, so as to make them One to our conceptions. We therefore unhesitatingly address the Father as God^ He being ordinarily so designated in the New Testament. And yet we remember that there is One who "was in the beginning with God, and was God," and One also who is connected with them both in acts of divine worship; and, moreover, that the word Father is often used to interpret the word God^ in cases where it would be utterly superfluous, if the Father alone were divine. There is no system which gives us such views of the dignity of human nature as our evangelical system. It represents human nature as capable of union with the divine nature, in the person of Jesus Christ. Our na- DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 195 ture can think, speak, act, and exist through eternity, in personal union with the " Word who w^as God." What dignity is there in any view of man, to be compared with this ? It holds out to every human being the boundless career of glory which is before our nature, if we are saved, seeing that it is capable of being pos- sessed forever by One " in whom dwelleth all the ful- ness of the Godhead bodily." Surely, if, as some say, it costs us painful efforts, (as it does not when con- vinced of our guilt and our need of a divine Savior,) to believe in the supreme deity of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, and so in a Trinity, we are recompensed when we see our nature in such personal, nay, bodily union with the Divine Word. It opens to the heart of the believer such views of his relation to his God? draws him into such union and communion with Him, and so persuades him, as nothing else can, of identifi- cation with his divine Redeemer, that the whole circle of natural and revealed truth furnishes no such sources of pleasure. So that no system is to be compared, as a source of happiness, too, with that which makes Jesus" Christ the object of divine worship and supreme love. Witness the hymns which it has produced, surpassing all other lyrics in rapturous thoughts and expressions. The Congregational Watts has to-day filled many temples of God, wherever the English language is spoken, with his glowing strains. Notice how his hymns begin 19G pitts-strep:t chapel lectures. " Behold the glories of the Lamb Amidst his father's throne ; Prepare new honors for his name, And songs before unknown. Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood, Hast set the prisoners free ; Hast made us kings and priests to God, And we shall reign with thee." The Methodist, Charles Wesley, almost his rival, cries : " He left his father's throne above. So free, so infinite his grace ; Emptied himself of all but love. And bled for Adam's helpless race. 'Tis mercy all, immense and free, For, O my God, it found out me." The Baptist Bunyan comes singing through the world, in every language, to every pilgrim heaven- ward ; and, without telling us how he was baptized, or how we must be, lifts up his voice, and sings : " Blest Cross ! blest Sepulchre ! blest, rather be The Man who there was put to shame for me." And the Episcopal Heber leads great Missionary assemblies everywhere, as they sing : " Waft, waft ye winds his story, Till o'er our ransomed nature The Lamb for sinners slain. Redeemer, King, Creator Eeturns in bliss to reign." DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 197 Nothing, therefore, is further from the truth than to call evangelical religion " a gloomy system." On the contrary, to all who enter into the full spirit of the sys- tem, it is a perfect rapture. Sin and death are gloomy ; redemption from them is not so. If we believe all which the Bible and our own consciousness and obser- vation teach us respecting the entire natuial alienation of man from. God, and his need of divine help, we are not justly chargeable with " gloomy views " for dis- cerning and promulgating the truths relating to hu- man nature and redemption. A man who should tell newly-discovered islanders, when foreign people begin to visit their shores, of the disease called the small pox, and, setting forth its horrors, should urge vaccina- tion, might perhaps be charged by some with taking " gloomy views " of human life ; but with how much reason ? Not only does our faith lead us, with our fellow cit- izens generally, to bless the poor and afflicted at home ; — it makes the world of mankind, for which Christ died, to be our neighbors ; — and having a gospel which is for the barbarian as well as for the Jew, for the wise and the unwise, we seek to fulfil the last command of Christ, " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." This was the original character of the gospel — it was essentially a self-propagating system ; and we may be sure, therefore, that they who have the true gospel will 17* 198 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. spread it to the ends of the earth. It is this system which has made the barbarous Sandwich Islanders an independent nation, converted South Sea cannibals and Greenlanders, the Burmese, and Hottentots ; and has sent to heaven representatives from every nation and tongue, as fruits of its love and zeal. As an illustration of the way in which our belief in the Divine Redeemer helps the human mind in its thoughts and feelings about the Deity, I will speak of one who was distressed at the thought of an eternal, self-existent God ; — and who, at times, is not visited with such thoughts ? *' How came He ? " said the inquirer. " What made it possible for Him to be ? Everything else had a beginning ; how could He exist always, with no origin, no cause ? " Then he would reprove himself for irreverence or presumption ; still these thoughts would return. One day, having been much troubled on the subject, he said to himself, " I am sure of one thing, and that is, that Jesus Christ is what the New Testament describes. I believe in his preexistence, his birth, his miracles, his omnipresence, his omnipotence ; that he redeemed me and will save me. The Bible tells me, ' All things were made by him.' He who made me is my God. Whoever else may be God, he is God to me ; and I will worship him as my God, and let go all my troubled thoughts about the infinite and eternal Deity." So he believed in the DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 199 Divine Savior, and prayed to him, and committed the keeping of his soul to him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator, till at last his mind was perfectly at rest ; and whenever the thought of the past eternity of God began to oppress him, he fled to the manger at Bethlehem, and to Bethany, and to Gethsemane, and to Calvary, and Olivet, saying to his Savior : " Rock of Ages ! cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee." This is one practical illustration of the design in the great mystery of godliness — God manifest in the flesh. ' It is as when a vine-dresser adds a lower rail to the trellis, and helps the young tendrils as they reach after something to sustain them. The Father will not be jealous if we thus receive Christ as Him " in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Other men besides this friend of whom I speak, have similar experiences with regard to the in- comprehensible Deity. Dr. Watts tells us, " Till God in human flesh I see, My thoughts no comfort find." And when he looks within the vail, he says, and Christians of every name on earth respond, • " There I l)ehold with sweet delight. The Sacred Three in One ; And strong affections fix my sight, On God's incarnate Son." 200 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. One great and good object will be effected by the present course of lectures, if it be established in our minds that the Evangelical sects do not differ as to the truths which are essential to salvation. On that subject they are a unit. But we are all weak and sinful, and we sometimes unduly magnify our party distinctions, and lose sight of that great salvation which is independent of forms and names. We also are tempted to engage in speculations. We specu- late, even, about the nature of the atonement, and other things, when we should all do better to preach and teach the simple truths of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, and the necessity of the new birth, and warn men of their danger as sinners, and point them to Christ. We need to ask pardon of God and our fellow men, that sectarian zeal should ever chill our love to one another, and prevent us from exalting the things in which we agree, and keeping those things in which we differ in their proper place. We trust that the present effort will lead us all to determine afresh not to know anything but Christ and him crucified ; and in our endeavors to set forth the peculiarities of our respective systems, to do it with Christian love and charity, abstaining from everything like sarcasm, and ridicule, or reflecting upon the understanding or the motives of others, but seeking to convince and persuade each other, if we may; but, above all things, DR, AEAMS' LECTURE. 201 combining to make Christ and his salvation the Alpha and the Omega of our ministrations. There are some who have not yet united themselves to any evangelical denomination, who, nevertheless, may secretly have embraced the way of salvation by Jesus Christ. Instead of saying, " Forbid them, be- cause they follow not with us," we say, in the words of Jesus, " Forbid them not, for he that is not against us is on our part." We shall none of us be saved or lost, merely for belonging, or not belonging, to any particular denomination. But this is true, that no one can experimentally accept the truths of the Savior's supreme deity, and of his sacrifice for sin, and yet leave the Christian community long in doubt where he stands. To worship Christ as God, and to believe in deliverance from sin and eternal misery through Him, so affects the mind that, like the Apostles, we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. " And being let go, they went to their own company." This is a law of our nature. We associate with those of our own kind ; in politics we may belong to no party, but in religion we show the state of our hearts quickly by our religious associations. Jesus Christ has a definite character. He is one thing or another. He is deity, or he is a creature, between whom, if he be a creature, however exalted, and deity, there is an infinite distance. If one would fly ninety-six mil- 202 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. lions of miles to the sun, it would make but little difference whether he started from the plain or from the Himalaya Mountains. The difference between the most exalted creature and God is as really infinite as between us and God. The most exalted creature is only a creature. Some who are disposed to walk after the evangelical faith, stumble at the great stum- bling block of Christ crucified. They find it hard to place the Savior on the throne, but prefer to leave him very far up in the regions of uncertainty. For such friends we sometimes think that the New Testament ends with that passage concerning Christ, in the first chapter of the Acts, " And a cloud received him out of their sight." The Apostles were not mystics ; they left no man in doubt as to their opinions concerning Christ; the churches had no occasion to debate whether one and another of them was sound as to his views of Him for whom they had suffered the loss of all things. It was not the Apostles' doctrine that there are many ways to heaven, as there are many railroads leading to a great city from opposite points, but all terminating in the same city. They insisted that there was but one way to be saved. There is, therefore, a test of truth which we can easily remember and apply in hearing the preachers of differ- ent denominations, and in deciding whom to believe. DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 203 While it does not follow that every system declaring a belief in itself to be essential to salvation, is, for that reason, the truth of God, we find this to be true, that Christ and the apostles declared that a belief in the gospel was necessary in order to be saved. Hence we conclude, that if a man professes to preach the gos- pel to us, and does not insist that there is something in his system which we must believe, or perish, he does not preach Christ's gospel. If he says. All systems have some good in them and you must cull for your- self, only be sincere ; " For forms of faith, let senseless zealots fight, He can't be wrong whose life is in the right ; " and it is bigotry for me to say that you must believe this which I preach to you, or perish ; — if he speaks thus, all men, even the worst, are straightway war- ranted in saying to him, as the evil spirits, in Paul's time, had the discernment to say to certain false teach- ers, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" We require him to say to us, if he professes to preach the gospel. There are things in my system which you may receive or reject, and though I consider them to be scriptural, and good, and profitable unto men, you may innocently follow me, or my neighbor, who dif- fers from me in these things. There are, nevertheless, some things in my system which you must believe ; and I have no authority to say that you will be saved 204 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. unless you do. My everlasting all I venture upon the truth of these things. I must believe these things or perish. I believe that you must do the same. A man who says this has one essential proof that he preaches Christ's gospel. For this is what Christ did, and the apostles. We therefore try men who preach to us, by this rule. If you insist that you have a gospel which is essential to salvation, we will listen to it ; but if it be not essential to salvation whether we believe you or those who in every thing differ from you, the gospel which you preach is another gospel, and the charitable Paul — he who wrote those remarkable words to the Corinthian Christians on charity, tells us, " Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." In the next words he repeats the same imprecation, to show that he speaks with de- liberation : " As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."* There are some things, therefore, about which no man can prop- erly be what is called " liberal " ; he must be strict, he must be exclusive, in matters of life and death. A physician or surgeon can be liberal in everything but in his opinion of the disease or fracture ; there he must be decided ; but if he stands over us and, with an * Galatians, i : 8, 9. DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 205 amiable face, hopes that all will be weU, and declines to act with decision, and vigorously, lest it should seem like professional bigotry, he is an object of abhorrence. The lukewarm Laodiceans teach us what -feelings in- decision in religion excite in the mind of Christ. Therefore we say to those who preach to us. You must warn us that we must believe the gospel as you preach it, or we must perish. Apply it, if you will, to your " infant baptism," or your " immersion," or your " per- fectability," or your " apostolical succession," and tell us that " he that believeth not shall not see life, but ij^e wrath of God abideth on him." Bring yourself and your gospel to that test. You will not, you cannot, erect non-essentials into a condition of salvation, if you are like Christ and the apostles. But, if you have noth- ing in your system which you are able thus to insist upon as essential to salvation, and if, notwithstanding, you profess to be a minister of Jesus, you are ashamed of the gospel, and we have reason to be ashamed of you, and we fear that Christ will be ashamed of you before his Father and before his angels. Whatever others may believe, and whatever else may be true. Evangelical Christians, if they truly fol- low their belief, are safe. K there be no atonement for sin, they are safe. If there be no retributions after death, they are safe. But suppose that there is only one way in which we 18 206 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. are forgiven and saved ; suppose that the consequences of unpardoned sin are banishment from God, and that there is no probation after death. We have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us. And now we do not turn and say to our fellow men, You must believe as we do because we thus believe, or you cannot be saved. But we do say, "We do not expect to be saved but in this way. And it is not unkind in us, either in temporal or eternal things, to desire that our fellow men should be partakers of that on which our hopes depend. Another thing which confirms us in our confident attachment to the evangelical system is, that we never heard of its being renounced on a dying bed. We have personal knowledge of instances in which every other system has been abjured in the last hours of life, for the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an unheard of thing for a dying person to say, I used to believe in the Savior's sufferings and death as the ground of pardon and acceptance with God. But now that I am dying, such a Savior is not the Savior which I need. This we never hear. But the ministers of every evangelical persuasion testify to casfes in which dying persons have fled for refuge to the atoning Savior. Men are exceedingly apt to call on Christ in their extremity. Sea captains have spoken of this. David Hume played cards a short DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 207 time before he died, having been fixed in his chair for the purpose, with the determination of meeting death *'like a philosopher." But as the cold shadows of the valley fell upon him, he needed a rod and staff to comfort him, and he cried, " Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me, Jesus Christ save me." It was related in my hearing by one* who said that he heard it directly from a nurse who attended Thomas Paine in his last hours, that she overheard him commending his soul to the Savior, — "God help me, O thou Son of God, have mercy upon me." In the hour of sickness and weakness, the Almighty Redeemer, with his divine attributes and his human sympathies, seems to be just such a Savior as we need. We love in health and strength to trust in him, as well as in the swell- ings of Jordan. We wish our fellow men to do the same. And now, if any will accept that which has been de- clared to be, substantially, the evangelical system, while we invite them cordially to come with us into that form of church order which is represented by New England Congregationalism, we do also most cordially bid them take their choice, and go to eithei of these evangelical denominations, to labor with us for Christ, and to be trained up for heaven ; where we * Washington Allston. 208 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. shall surely meet them, like friends ascending by the different sides of the same hill to keep a festival on the summit. There are three times when all the mem- bers of these evangelical sects think and feel alike on the subject of religion : When they first receive the pardon of their sins ; when they are on their knees to- gether in prayer ; and when they are dying. The faith which they have in those moments is one and the same, in all languages and in all climes ; they all de- clare that it is essential to their salvation, and to yours. "With Christian salutations, and giving the right hand of fellowship, to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, I will now close by repeating some lines of an eminent New England Congregational pastor, the Rev. Jonathan Mitchell, of Cambridge, who died in 1668, of whom it was said that "all New England shook when that pillar fell to the ground." The lines are part of an elegy which he made upon President Dunster, of Harvard College, with whom Mr. Mitchell and others had had great and serious differences of opinion as to the proper subjects of bap- tism. But when he died, Mr. Mitchell wrote an elegy upon him, containing these thoughts and feelings, which we ourselves shall severally have as we hear of the decease of one and another of those from whom we differ in unessential things, and when we, also, are on the verge of heaven : V DR. ADAMS' LECTURE. 209 " Where faith in Jesus is sincere, That soul^e, saving, pardoneth ; — What wants or errors else there be That may and do consist herewith ; And though we be imperfect here And in one mind can't often meet. — Who know in part, in part may err ; Though faith be one, yet all can't see't. Yet may we once the rest obtain In everlasting bliss above, . Where Christ with perfect saints doth reign, In perfect light and perfect love ; — ♦ I There shall we all like-minded be ; Faith's unity is there full grown ; There, one truth all both love and see, And thence we perfect are in one. There Luther both, and Zuinglius, Ridley and Hooper, there agree ; There all the trulv righteous, Sans Feud, live to eternity." Now THE God of Peace that brought again FROM the dead OUR LoRD JeSUS, THAT GrEAT Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will ; working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ ; to whom be glory for ever and EVER. Amen. FIFTH LECTURE. REV. GEORGE M. RANDALL, D.D., RECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH, FLORENCE STREET. 211 Y. WHY I AM A CHURCHMAN. " Thus saith the lokd, stand ye in the ways, and see, and abz FOR THE OLD PATHS." — Jer. VI.. 16. "Hold fast the form of sound words." — 2 Tim. i, 13. " The CHURCH of the living god, the pillar and ground of the TRUijp." — 1 Tim. III. 15. The object of this discourse is to indicate the dis- tinctive principles of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The enunciation of these is a sufficient answer to the question : Why I am a Churchman, — and cannot preach the Gosr)el in any other ecclesiastical organiza- tion. There is, and since the days of Abraham, there ever has been, such a thing, on the Earth, as the Church of God. He originated it, — He governs and protects it. It is His instrumentality for the reformation, — the regeneration and the salvation of a fallen world. It is that kingdom, which Christ has promised to be with, to the end of time, and against which, the gates of hell shall never prevail. God wrote its constitu- tion, appointed and commissioned its officers. As 214 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. man did not originate this organization, so he can neither abrogate nor modify it. He can neither estab- lish the terms of admission nor clothe its rulers with power. If then, the church in its origin and authority is in no sense human^ — and is in every sense divine, we must look for its features, in the only book, where God has written out His will, touching the salvation of men. That Book is the Bible. Here, if any where, must we find the charter of the church. Here, the boundaries of this great kingdom are defined. Here the titles and the functions of its ©fficers, — their au- thority and their duties are declared. ♦The world is divided into two great classes : those who are within this kingdom, and those who are with- out it. There is no neutrality in the great contest be- tween a righteous God and a rebellious world. Every man is either an adopted citizen in this great com- monwealth of grace, or he is an alien. " They who are not for me are against Him," is the declaration of Christ. The lines which mark the boundaries of God's King- dom, have been drawn by His own finger, for the dark- ened eye of the sinner. This fact, of itsfelf, is suffi- cient to warrant the conclusion, that this demarkation is so distinct and definite, that " the way-faring man, tho' a fool, need not err therein," and "-he that runs may read." The church then is God's Kingdom on earth, protected and preserved by the abidmg power DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 215 of His own promised presence, and may be as readily recognised by the description contained in the Script- ures, as any earthly kingdom may be known by its Constitution and Statute Book. If there be " no other name given among men, whereby we must be saved," but the name of Christy and the church is " Christ's mystical body," then it follows, that the sinner must know, where^ as well as lioiv to look for refuge, from the power and penalty of sin. He is not to be sent in search of an invisible ark. The Israelites knew when they crossed the line, and entered " the promised land." The penitent prodigal knew when his father kissed him, — and when his trembling feet crossed the threshold of that father's house. God made a covenant with Abraham, and with his seed, and with nobody else. This covenant was sim- ple. The seal was definite. The conditions were ex- plicit. All who received the seal, were thereby made parties to the covenant, and all, who were in the cov- enant, were in the church, and all who were out of the covenant, were out of the church. From Abraham to Christ no person could mistake the Church of God. No intelligent man could be at a loss where to find this divinely ordained society. From Moses to John, it was equally plain who were the administrators of this kingdom ; by whom ap- pointed, — their authority and their functions. 216 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. God chose the tribe of Levi, as the ministerial tribe. Of them, He took the family of Aaron, as the priestly family ; of these, He selected one for the high priest- hood. Thus was the church of Jehovah furnished with a ministry, whose authority came with the great seal of heaven. And although this priesthood did not always please a Holy God, yet no other class of men, however learned or godly, were permitted to perform their sacred duties.* Thus were the people saved from all confusion in their inquiries for the church, and for the divinely ordained men, who, alone, were empow- ered to offer sacrifices in behalf of the people, and to teach them the way of life. In the fullness of time, God Himself descended from His throne to His foot-stool. Here he lived as a man, among men. " He came not to destroy, but to fulfill." His mission was to complete the plan of re- demption. It was no part of His gracious errand, to abrogate His own church. There never had been but one church, and there never was to be but one. " He brought life and immortality to light ;" fulfilled prophecy ; became the embodiment of all types and figures ; put an end to all sacrifices by the sacrifice of Himself. He changed the seal^ but left the cove- nant itself untouched. The " tree " which He had planted, remained, though "the natural branches were * Numbers xvi. DR. kandall's lecture. 217 broken oftV and the branches of " the wild olive tree were graffed in." * • The Jewish church had the Scriptures., — the Priest- hood and the Ordinances, By these it was every where and by all known, as " the church of the living God." In Christ the Levitical Priesthood found its comple- ment. In Him that Priesthood ended, and with it, the sacrificial services of the Temple. From Christ, the Great High Priest, went forth the Gospel, and from Him went forth the commission to men, to preach it, and to administer its ordinances. There was no break in the great chain of grace. The covenant continued as in the beginning. The old church was not pulled down, that a new one might be built up. The Kingdom of Christ was to be known, as the Mosaic Church was known, by the Word., — the Ministry and the Ordinances. Wherever these were, there was " the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the Truth." If the dark line of the " Law " was sufficiently distinct, to mark the pale of the Jewish Church, much more clearly would the bright borders of Christ's Kingdom be defined, by the shining of the Sun of Righteousness. It would, in- deed, be most extraordinary, if the Church of Christ should be invisible., when "the darkness was past" * Horn. XI., 17-24. 218 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. and the " True Light^^ was now shining in all its un- eclipsed splendor.* If there were certain infallible marks, by which the Legal Church was to be iden- tified, it would be more than marvellous, if there were not marks equally infallible, by which erring men might fmerringly distinguish the Gospel Church, from every form of human society. Christ appointed and sent forth, twelve men, whom He denominated His Apostles, — as the Chief Minis- ters in His church ; investing them with authority to preach His Gospel, administer the Sacraments, and exercise discipline, in His Kingdom. He moreover authorized them to send others, in His name, with like powers. He also sent forth the " Seventy,^^ to preach His Word.f Here then, as under the Old Dispen- sation, we find three grades of the Ministry: Christy the Apostles, and the Elders or the " Seventy.''^ On the night of the Savior's betrayal. He instituted the Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. Just before His ascension. He gave to His Apostles their great com- mission, "to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name >f the Holy Trinity," J Their authority to go, and send others, came to them in these words which con- stituted a commission that can never expire, until the Church has done its work in the • conversion of the * " One net " Matt, xiii., 47, 48. — " One field.'' — 24-31 . t Luke X. 1 X Matt, xxviii. 18, 19, 20 DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 219 world : " As my Father hath sent me^ even so send 1 Christ did not call His Disciples together and or- ganize them into a Church, and then direct and em- power them to elect and ordain their own ministers. He did not do thus, because these ministers were His ministers — the ministers of God; and their success- ors, to the end of the world, were to be His ministers, deriving all their power and authority as such from Him, and from Him alone. In accordance with this commission, the Apostles, soon after the ascension of the Savior, proceeded to ordain a class of ministers, called Deacons^ whom they empowered to preach and baptize.f Here again appears the threefold ministry : Apostles^ Presbyters and Deacons. Why God saw fit to have High Priests^ Priests and Levites in the Jewish Church, it is not for us to say. It might have pleased Him to have appointed one order, and in that case, one order would have been enough. But for wise reasons, He saw fit to have three, and therefore neither one order nor two orders would have answered the end of the Priesthood. This matter of the Threefold Priesthood was not a notion of Moses, but a fiat of God. Why Christ saw fit to establish a similar numerical distinction in the ministry of the Church, I do not know. All we know about it is the fact, and that is all we need to know. *John, XX. 21, t Acts Yi. 3^6. 1 Tim. in. 8, 10-13. 220 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. The Savior was on the earth for the space of forty days after His resurrection and before His ascension. During this period, He instructed His inspired Apostles in matters pertaining to His Kingdom. Christ prom- ised that the Comforter, which was the Holy Ghost, when received would teach them all things.* He told them to remain in Jerusalem until they had received the baptism of the Holy Ghostf On the day of Pen- tecost, the spirit was poured out upon them. J While they were yet inspired with the Holy Ghost, and so were taught by it, they ordained men to the third or lowest order of the ministry.§ This distinction was, therefore, not a mere fancy of the Apostles. It was the revealed mind of the Great Head of the Church, in beautiful harmony with the mind of the unchange- able God, as it had been heard and heeded by " Moses and the prophets." For aught we know, one order of the ministry in the Christian Church might have been as good as three, and it certainly would have been as good, if Christ had seen fit so to ordain. But He was pleased to appoint three orders, and therefore neither one nor two are or can be sufficient. It is to be observed, that all this occurs before the New Testament was written, and before the Christian church had any organization, except in its ministry, The ministry had its mission and its commission from *^ John xiY. 26. t Acts I. 4, 5. J Acts ii. § Acts vi. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 221 Christ, before the church had any organic form what- ever. Here was the church of Christ: a kingdom on earth; divisible kingdom among men; for here was the word; the written word of the Old Testament, and the unwrit- ten word of the New Testament. Here were the Sac- raments, and here was the Ministry. This was the Christian Church, and nothing else was. None mis- took it; none could mistake it. The believers readily recognized it, and entered it ; and the enemies of God had no difficulty in finding it, that they might perse- cute it. Here was a Christian ministry with their commissions fresh from God. Here was the seal of the covenant, direct from the hand of Christ. Here, then, was the line drawn by the finger of God, around the kingdom of his Son, which marked, with living light, the boundaries which separated it from the king- dom of darkness, and from all organizations of men, for all future ages. The hand of the Almighty wrote over " the narrow gate " of that kingdom, in letters bright and bold enough to be read of all men, this sentence : " Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king-dom of God.^^* This language is sufficiently plain, and exclusive, and uncompromising, to mark the perpetual distinction between the church and the world. That these three * John III. 5. 19* 222 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. orders were to be continued in the church, and were to constitute the Christian ministry, for all time to come, and were to go hand in hand with the word and the sacraments, thereby identifying the Christian church throughout the earth, is evident from the history of the church, in the apostolic age. The original number of the twelve apostles was made good by the appointment of Matthias in place of Judas.* The objection that the office of an apostle was a temporary one, instituted solely for the work of laying the foundation of the church, and was therefore confined to the twelve, is effectually silenced by the fact that others were added to this number, and that too, before the canon of the New Testament was completed Thus the miraculous conversion of St. Paul, and his appointment to the first order of the ministry immediately, by Christ himse^, proves con- clusively that the Order of the Apostles was not to be limited to the college of the twelve, since he was the thirteenth Apostle. Barnabas was also set apart to the work of an Apostle, and he made the fourteenth. And although one qualification of the first Apostles was, that they should have seen the Lord Jesus Christ, and so be witnesses of His resurrection, which was of ne- cessity confined to them as the Apostles, who were rommissioned to lay the foundation of the church, yet * Acts I. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 223 the power of their office, the commission which they had received from Christ, was transmissable, and so others, by receiving it, would be admitted to the rank of an Apostle. Hence St. Paul ordained Titus to the office of an Apostle, although he had never seen Christ, and was not, therefore, a witness of his resur- rection, and as such empowered him to ordain elders in every city.* He moreover conseci^ted Timothy to the apostleship, and the churches in Ephesus were plactd in his charge, f These Apostles thus ordained and " sent," had the power to ordain and send forth others, clothed with the like office and ministry. Their com- mission included, of course, the power to ordain men to the second and third * orders. All this is a matter of New Testament record. In the succeeding age, as we learn from ecclesiastical history, wherever the gospel was preached, there was found this three-fold ministry, with the word and the sacraments ; and the Christian church appears in no other form. In the New Testament, the word " Bishop," which means an ^'' overseer^'' is applied to the second order of the ministry, interchangeably, with the word " pres- bijterP Very soon after the death of the first apostles, this title, " Bisliop^^ was applied to the order of the apostles, or the highest grade of the ministry, leaving the original title of apostle to designate those, who * Titus I., 5. tNoteC. 224 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. were eye-witnesses of Christ's resurrection. Within ten years after the death of St. John, who died in a. d. 100, the three orders of the ministry were designated BISHOPS, PRIESTS, and DEACONS. Ignatius, who was a disciple of St. John, and who was made bishop of Antioch by apostles then living, and who sealed his faith in the blood of martyrdom, in less than ten years after the death of ^t. John, thus speaks : " Attend to the bishop, and to the presbytery, and to the dea- cons." * The church rapidly spread in Asia, Africa, and Europe. St. Thomas travelled as far east as India. St. Mark preached in Egypt, and founded the church at Alexandria. St. Peter carried the gospel to various parts of Asia, and may have visited Rome. St. Paul not only preached the gospel in Greece, and Rome, and Spain, but it is believed that he planted the stand- ard of the cross in the island of Britain. During the first three centuries, the church grew rapidly, and con- tinued comparatively pure. Wherever found, and by whatever people embraced, it had the word, the sacra- ments, and the three-fold ministry, with its commis- sion, claiming to have the seal of the apostles. By these divine credentials it was everywhere recognized and submitted to, as "the church of the hving God — the pillar and ground of the truth." Such were the * Wakes. Ig. pp. 218, 219, 227. DR. Randall's lecture. 225 distinctive features of this kingdom, that no one who was looking for it, could possibly mistake it ; and no considerable body of men had, as yet, the presumption to put asunder what Christ had joined together. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century, the church began to receive the smiles of the world, and the patronage of the state, and then it began to decline in godliness. Thus far each church had its own bishop, and these were essentially independent of each other. The churches in Asia, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, were on an equality, and all of them were independ- ent of Rome. The bishop of Rome met other bishops of the church in councils, without having or claiming any superiority. It was not until the seventh century, that the bishop of Rome, having stealthily assumed powers that did not belong to him, was acknowledged by the western churches as a Pope, and not even then without sharp opposition. The papal supremacy was then, and has ever since been rejected by the Greek and Oriental churches. Henceforth there was a great division in the Christian church. Asia and the east of Europe including Greece, and the north-eastern part of Africa were on the one side, and known as the Greek Church ; and Europe, from Austria westward, was on the other side, and known as the Latin Church. The Church of England was founded, probably, in 226 pitts-strep:t chapel lectuues. the Apostolic Age, and, it is said, by the labors of St. Paul. In common with other chm^ches it maintained its independence of the Chm'ch of Rome, for five cen- turies. It had the Word, the Sacraments, and the three-fold Ministry '. Bishops^ Priests^ and Deacons. It derived the succession, not from the Church of Rome, but from the Apostles^ through the Bishops of Aries and Lyons, and the Asiatic Bishops. The British Church thus continued, until the time of the Saxon invasion. After that event, the Romish Church, in a. d. 596, sent Augustine, with a company of Missionaries, to that Island. The efforts of these Romans were so far successful, that while the heathen Saxons were converted to Christianity, the British Church herself was gradually. brought under the dom- ination of the Romish hierarchy. When Augustine landed he found the queen an avowed Christian. He found, moreover, a church fully organized, with an Archbishop and seven Bish- ops. As early as A. D. 400 or 420, a synod of Brit- ish Christians was held at Verulam, for the purpose of checking the heresy of Pelagius. At the Coun- cil of Aries, held in A. D. 314, there were present British Bishops, and, at this time, there were three metropolitans in Britain, and this was two hundred years before there were any Roman missionaries on the island. St. Alban, the proto-martyr, was put to death for his faith, during the persecution under Diocle- DR. Randall's lecture. 227 tian in A. D. 305. Almost three hundred years before Rome had a foothold in Britain, the British Church had not only her Bishops but her martyrs. Thus it is evident that the Church was fully estab- lished in England, and from a source entirely inde- pendent of Rome, nearly five hundred years before the Romish Church sent thither its emissaries. The shades of the night of the middle ages were now falling upon Christendom. The Pope's suprema- cy had finally, though reluctantly, been conceded by the western churches, and the successor of St. Peter was beginning to lord it over God's heritage. To the great credit of the English Church, it can be shown, that, during this dark period, there were leading men in that communion, who made a bold stand, not only against the usurpations, but against the corruptions of popery. In A. D. 961, Archbishop Dunstan did not hesitate to set at defiance the papal mandate, when he .deemed it unjust or improper. Alfric Pottock, Arcli- bishop of York from 1023 to 1050, openly impugned the doctrine of transubstantiation. " In the next cen- tury, Gilbert Foliat, consecrated Bishop of Hereford in 1148, set at defiance the papal authority, and though twice excommunicated by the Pope, paid no regard to the thunders of the Vatican." "Robert Grostete, or Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln, from 1234 to 1258, visited Rome, and protested against its corruptions before the Pope and Cardinals." He subsequent ly 228 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. " set at naught the Pope's commands, for which he was excommunicated; but the thunderbolt fell harm- less at his feet, and he died in peaceful possession of his See." * As late as the twelfth century the Irish Church refused to accede fully to the supremacy of the Pope. For hundreds of years " there was dark- ness over the promised land " of Christendom, " and gross darkness covered " both ministry and people. Idolatry, superstition, unsound doctrines, and corrupt practices, everywhere prevailed. Yet this was still the Church of Christ. Just as the Jewish Church was the Church of God, while in a state of idolatrous rebellion. In our Savior's time the ministry of that church had become exceedingly corrupt, yet He recog- nized them as having divine authority, and in this man- ner counselled His disciples : " The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat ; all, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do, but do not ye after their works." f In the sixteenth century, the- time, in God's good Providence, had come, when the Apostolic Church of England should arise, and throw- ing off the papal yoke, again take her rightful place as a branch of the Universal Church of Christ. In doing this " she freed herself from the errors into which she had fallen." There was no new church created at the Reforma- * Chapin on the Primitive Church t Matt, xxiii., 1,2. DR. RANDALL'S LECTUKE. 229 tion. The English Church, by the help of her divine head, reformed herself. She did not thereby lose her identity^ much less her Apostolic existence. " The er- rors of the church were not the church herself, and in quitting them she did not quit herself, any more than a man changes his face when he washes it, or loses his identity when he recovers from a disease. The English Church after the Reformation was as much the English Church, as Naaman was Naaman after he had washed away his leprosy in the river Jordan." During all this period of darkness and corruption, the Church of England did not lose her visibility or her identity. " Job was visibly and verily Job, when he was covered with sores. So was the church in Britain visible in the darkest hour of that black mid- night of ages. She was visible in her churches, in her ordained ministers, in the Holy Sacraments, the Holy Scriptures." She shone forth in the flames of her martyrs, who suffered for the truth. The rule of reformation which she followed was this: to reject whatever of doctrine was unscriptural, and whatever of usages were contrary to the practice of the church in the first and purest ages. She sim- ply threw off what popery had superadded to the faith. The gi-eat difference between the reformation in Eng land and the reformation on the Continent was this : the English Church rejected nothing, simply because the Romish Church held or practiced it, for the reason 230 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. that this, of itself, did not make a doctrine or a cere- mony wrong. Hence, she retained the ministry in the three orders, of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, a liturgi cal service, clerical vestments, and other minor matters, none of which were the fruits of the papacy. It is very true, Rome had abused the office of a Bishop, but that was no good reason for rejecting what the Apostles had established. So Rome had more than abused the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not only by withholding the cup from the laity, but by degrad- ing that divine Ordinance of Christ, into an act of ab- solute idolatry; yet that most abominable abuse would not justify the rejection of the Sacrament alto- gether. There were some things which the English Church held, and still hold, in common with the Ro- man Church, for the good reason that these things were held by the Church in the Apostolic age. On the contrary, the Reformers on the Continent were not content to exscind what was corrupt, but in their zeal they cut off what was Apostolic. They rejected Epis- copacy, because the Bishop of Rome was a Pope. As well might they have rejected the Bible and the Lord's Supper. The multitude of sects which subsequently sprang up, carried this unlicensed liberty to still greater ex- tremes. There were the " Independents," who not only rejected Episcopacy, but Presbyterianism also, and so refused all ministry that pretended to an Apos- DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. Z6i tolic commission, and accepted such only as the con- gregation should make for themselves, hence they were called " Congregationalistsy Then there were the Quakers^ who rejected not only the ministry but the Sacraments. The Puritans, who would not tolerate either the Episcopacy of England or the Presbyterian- ism of Geneva, and who felt aggrieved at the union of church and state, in consequence of their sufferings as dissenters, emigrated to this country in search of that liberty which they could not enjoy at home. They had hardly placed their feet on Plymouth Eock ere they formed a state and joined it to the church, so that the colonial daughter, in her infancy, rivaled her venerable mother in the tenacity with which she cher- ished the unnatural wedlock of church and state. Nor was she very much behind her queenly matrons in the zeal with which she maintained the supremacy of her established religion, as Quakers, Baptists and Churchmen could feelingly attest. The members of the Church of England in the colo- nies were comparatively few. Nevertheless, several parishes were organized in New England, and in New York, and Virginia. In Massachusetts, churchmen felt the fires of persecution, which puritan hands had lighted on the shores of the new world. Among other enactments, it was made a penal offence for any person to observe the festival of Christmas by a religi- ous service. So that if a churchman should sing a 232 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Psalm of Praise to God, in this city of Boston, in com- memoration of the birth of Christ, he would be liable to be thrust into a dungeon.* Episcopal clergymen were sent over from England, and chiefly maintained by Missionary Societies in the English Church. The parishes here were, nominally, under the care of the Bishop of London. When the colonies declared their independence of the mother country, then there was a necessary abrogation of the ecclesiastical relations, which the Episcopal Church here sustained to the Church of England. In the year 1784, the Rev. Samuel Seabury was elected to the office of Bishop, by the clergy of Con- necticut, and was consecrated by certain Bishops in Scotland. The Rev. William White of Pensylvania, Rev. Samuel Provost of New York, and the Rev. James Madison of Virginia, were consecrated Bishops in England ; the first two in 1787, and the last named in 1790. The organization of the Episcopal Church in the United States was very soon completed. And here were the Word, the Sacraments, and the Ministry, in the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in an unbroken succession, from the Apostles. This divine commission has thus come down to us from Christ. It has to-day just the same freshness and authority that it had, when St. Paul ordained Titus with power to ordain others in like manner. * Note A. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 233 The Bishops of the American Church can trace their ecclesiastical lineage through Archbishop Shel don, up through the old English, Ifalian, and Irish Episcopate, to the Apostolic Age. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States claims to be a branch of " the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." The Church of Christ, all admit, is an entity^ — it is somewhere, and must be known by something. Where is it, and what are the signs of it ? I answer : It is to be found wherever the Word, the Ministry, and the Sacraments are found. However it may be with others, for whom we do not speak, we claim to have these three. The Church of Christy which " He bought with His blood," which He has promised to be with, to the end of the world, is not just what wicked or even pious men choose to make it; one thing in one place, and a totally different thing in anothei place. The church is like its Divine Head in the essential qualities of its being: "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." There are men who reject the Bible : they don't believe the Word of God. Are they the church? There are others who reject the Sacraments. They recognise no covenant, and so repudiate the seal of it. Are they the church ? There are men that scout the divinity of Christ, laugh at His IVIiracles, and tallv of the coming of better men than He. Are they the church ? There are others who do not believe in any 20* 234 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ministry. Are they the Church of Christ ? Others pretend to have a revelation of their own, superior to the Bible — the' followers of Mahommed, Sweeden- borg, and Smith, with revelations as contradictory to each other, as they all are contradictory to the Word of God. Are they the Church of God's only Son ? There is the latest spiritual swindle, which has turned the minds of men till they are made to believe that a man can have a better book than the Bible rapped out for him at his own fireside. Are these people, who " seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter," are they the Church of Christ ? Can it be that the Savior, who knew what is in man, and who foresaw in what eccentric forms man's depraved folly would develop itself, should place His church in the world, as the exclusive instru- mentality for the salvation of men, without any infal- lible marks, by which it might be distinguished from all things human, and all things devilish ? Such an idea is preposterous. The world is as wicked, as rebellious, as curious, as inventive, as fond of change and of novelty now, as in the days of Moses and the Prophets, and as in the time of Christ and His Apos- tles. The marks of the Jewish Church were such, in that " wicked and adulterous generation," that no- body was in any danger of confounding that church with any other organization. Would Christ make the marks of the Christian Church to be less distinct ? Hi? Dil. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 235 church is here, among men ; it has been here more than eighteen hundred years, and it is to continue here, until the last great day. Amid the noise, and confusion, and conflict, which fill the world, as the offspring of sin, this church is to do its great work, and there will never be an hour when it many not be identified as "the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." It may be known now, and for all time to come it will be known, as it has been known for more than eighteen centuries. Wherever there "is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things, that of neces- sity are requisite to the same," * there is " the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." By whatever name it may be known, or who- ever may be its members, that organization is the Church of Christ, as distinguished from all devices of men. Do you ask how we may be sure of a ministry of "unbroken succession," from the Apostles, holding and handing down their commission from Christ ? I answer, — just as you know how this Bible has come down to us, " a true copy " of the original manuscript, written by the inspired pen of the Apostles. This * 19th Art. 236 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Holy Bible, and this ministerial commission, have been transmitted by the same hands. They have both been guarded by that vigilance of the church, in all ages, which warrants the confidence that is now, and ever has been entertained by the faithful, every- where, in the authenticity of that book, which we call the Bible * Is it objected, that this is an exclusive claim on the part of a comparatively small minority of Christen- dom? To this I answer: that for fifteen hundred years, from the Apostles, there was no other ministry in the Christian Church. Wherever the Church ex- isted there were these three orders : Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, claiming to come from the Apostles. But it may be asked : What relation does Episcopacy bear to other forms of ministry, at the present time ? To this question I reply, that if it were in the minority, in point of numbers, that fact could by no possibility affect its claim to Apostolic authority. The popular will in a particular locality cannot change the princi- ples of truth. Principles are not like politicians, made and unmade by a majority of voices. There are in the world, at the present time, about tvjo hundred millions of people, who bear the christian name. Of these two hundred millions, one hundred and eighty millions acknowledge the authority of the Apostolic * Note D. DR. Randall's lecture. 237 ministry, of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. It ap- pears then, that at the present time, about four fifths of all Christendom retain the ministry as the Apostles established it, and as the whole Church retained it for fifteen hundred years. It may be objected, that such a view of the ministry is an acknowledgment, that the Romish and Greek communions have the apostolic ministry, and are therefore Churches of Christ. We aver that they are Christian Churches, holding more or less of error. But their errors do not vitiate their Orders. Their abuse of the ministerial commission does not annihilate that commission. As I have al- ready said, the Scribes and Pharisees were so corrupt, in doctrine and in life, that the Savior likened them " to whited sepulchres full of all uncleanness," and yet, in His day, they sat in Moses' seat, and by His com- mand His disciples were required to recognize their divine commission, while they were to be careful to avoid the contamination of their evil example. "Baa- lam was a wicked man, but a true Prophet." * " The Sons of Eli, bad as they were, ceased not to be Priests." f It may be asked, if our Protestant Priest- hood is not indebted for its existence to a reformation brought about by Henry the VIII. to gratify his own evil passions ? Suppose we admit all this, what then ? " Henry was an agent in effecting this great work ; still *Num. XXII. to XXIV ; xxxi. 16. t 1 Saml. ii. 238 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the work-man is not the work. The Temple of Solo- mon was constructed with cedars of Lebanon hewn by workmen of heathen Tyre. Jehu did not please God ; but his reformation did. Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus were idolatrous ; but their edicts for God's service were religious. The Temple, in whicl our Lord was presented and in which He preached, and worshipped, had been repaired by the impious and cruel Herod, who sought the Lord's life." * So in the matter of the Reformation, the character of the agency did not affect the integrity of the work itself. There are not a few among the less enlightened of the com- munity, who regard the Episcopal Church, whose dis- tinctive principles I am here to explain, as but a slight remove from the Roman Catholic Church. While others, a little less bigoted, condescend to confess, that while ours is something of an improvement upon the papal communion, yet we are the legitimate offspring of the " mistress of abominations," and carry the lineaments of the scarlet mother in our countenances too distinctly to leave any doubt of our pedigree. In reply, we have only to say ; that ours is a Protestant Church in the most comprehensive sense of that term. It did not originate from the papal communion. It is no offspring of Rome. As I have already shown, the English Church had an existence five hundred years *Theop. Americanus, p. 199. 239 before Roman Catholic missionaries visited the Island of Great Britain. In the seventh century she was overcome by Popery ; and in the sixteenth century she threw oil that yoke of papal bondage, and stood, where she stood before, an apostolic church, with a ministry which came to her from apostolic hands, through Bish- ops who were not of Rome. So much as to the taint of parentage. In clearing herself of the corruptions of Romanism, at the Reformation, she uttered her per- petual " Protest " against the heresies of that church, in tones that made the Vatican tremble. The Episco- pal Church Romish I I ask, who fought the battles of the Reformation ? From whose ranks came forth, dur- ing this eventful period, that noble army of martyrs, who went to Heaven from the plains of Smithfield, in chariots of fire ? Who were the mighty men of that age of ecclesiastical revolution, whose lives and learn- ing were consecrated to the work of exposing the un- scriptural dogmas of Rome, whose strong hands were stretched forth to strip the pontifical robes from that graceless tyrant, who had so long and so effectually enslaved Christ's freemen? Who were the bold preachers of that day, the men that "took their lives in their hands," and went forth to denounce the usurpa- tions of priestly power, and the practice of the idola- trous rites of Romanism ? English churchmen, every one of them! The Episcopal Church Romish! I ask the men who make this assertion w^here do you bor- 24:0 PITTS-STKEET CHAPEL LECTURES. row the weapons wherewith you assault Popery? Whose arguments do you use, whose learning do you employ, whose books do you study, when you attack the Papacy ? Do not every one of these zealous boasters go to the armory, which the Old English Divines have so richly furnished, for every weapon they use against Romanism? Can they bring forward a single strong protestant argument, which is new, or which cannot be found in the writings of the champions of the Refor- mation in the Church of England? If all this be so, Vv^hy do men stultify themselves by continually ringing changes upon that well worn saw of " Popery in Episcopacy " ? But more than this, 1 challenge any body of Christians to produce one tithe of the amount of printed standard authority for doctrines, which are anti-papal, as the Protestant Episcopal Church can show in her Prayer Book and Homilies. Until these accusers can do something like this, they should cease to make the charge of Romanism or Romish tenden- cies against our church. But it is said that our min- isters go to Rome. Admitting that such may have been the fact in some instances, what does this prove ? Does it show that our's is a school of papacy ? No more than the treason of Judas proved that the college of the Apostles was a school of Apostacy. There are nearly twenty thousand Protestant Episcopal Clergy- men in the English and American Episcopal Churches ; and within the last ten years, there may have been DR. Randall's lecture. 241 among them one hundred defections to Rome. Take twenty thousand ministers of the other protestant bodies in this country, if there be so many here, and see how many of this number have been displaced from the ministry, during the last ten years, for errors in doctrine and life. You will probably find two for every one that has gone to Rome, from the Episcopal Church ; and do you therefore conclude that these respectable denominations are necessarily tending to infidelity and immorality.? There is another view of this matter, which should be taken. We get- credit for conversions to Roman- ism, to which we are not entitled. A very large pro- portion of the defections to popery, in the Episcopal church in the United States, both of clergy and laity, are persons, who have come into our fold from the various denominations around us. Many of them are fatally infected before they come among us ; they stay long enough to break out with the loathsome disease, and then we, forsooth, get the name of having a " pest- house," and all godly people are warned to keep clear of the Church, if they wish to preserve their faith in good health. It, however, has happened in many cases, that persons have gone direct to the Church of Rome, from the communions in which they have been reared, without taking the Episcopal Church in their way. This has been the fact in this State. The con- verts to popery, in Boston, for the last ten years, have 21 242 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. represented the Orthodox Congregationalist, the Bap- tist, and the Unitarian denominations. The protestant character of our communion is seen in this, that when a man once becomes a papist, he cannot stay in it. He cannot teach its doctrines, nor use its prayers, nor enjoy its services. He is not at home ; he " goes out from us because he is not of us," and like Judas, finds " his own place." We need no better witnesses of the thoroughly protestant character of our church, than the testimony of. perverts to Rome. The Episcopal Church is protestant in another sense. The world, as it stands aloof from the kingdom of Christ, is intelligent enough to perceive, that all the errors in Christendom are not clustered about the " seven hills ; " that there are those who have departed from the faith, who do not wear the livery of the Vatican. The Episcopal Church assaults the faith of none. She makes no war upon the system of others. She is content with simply maintaining her own Apostolic standards, and in this unobtrusive manner, protesting against their multiform errors. She beholds the ser- ried ranks of the Jlomans on the one hand, and the motley multitude of the conflicting sects on the other. Of these sects none are over three hundi'ed years old, and many of them are much younger ; some of them came into being, within the memory of persons in this congregation. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 243 In respect to church government, other protestant bodies may be divided into three classes : Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregational. .This last includes all who adopt that mode of church government ; em- bracing Baptists, Unitarians, Orthodox Congregation- alists, Universalists, a part of the Methodists, Quak- ers, Shakers, &c. The Methodists^ have an Episcopal form of government. Their ministry consists of Bishops, Elders and Deacons ; but their episcopacy only reaches to John Wesley ; whereas to be valid, it should go back to the Apostles. Mr. Wesley was a godly minister in the Church of England, at a time when pious preachers were not as numerous in that church as they are now. His heart burned within him for a true revival of pure and undefiled Religion, of which there was great need. God blessed his preach- ing. Multitudes became interested. These new con- verts were Church of England people, and their zeal- ous devotion to the duties of j-eligion procured for them the soubriquet of Methodists ; a title first given to Mr. Wesley at the University of Oxford, by way of reproach, for his exactness of life. Mr. Wesley never intended to be the founder of a sect. He says, at a meeting of their preachers in 1744, " I exhorted them to keep to the church ; observing that this was our pe- culiar glory — not to form any new sect, but abiding in our own church, to do to all men all the good we possibly could." A strong sectarian spirit having 244 ■ PITTS-STEEET CHAPEL LECTURES. manifested itself, and Mr. Wesley desiring to bring the matter to an issue, caused the question to be dis- cussed, and it was finally decided, without a dissent- ing voice, that " It is by no means expedient that the Methodists should leave the Church of England." So strong was this feeling, that the following declara- tion was inserted in the first xples of their society: '''' they that leave the churchy leave us^ "And this we did," says Mr. "Wesley, " not as a point of prudence^ but a point of conscience. In 1789, two years before his death, he used these words : " I declare once more, that I live and die a member of the Church of Eng- land, and that none who regard my judgment or ad- vice, will ever separate from it." "In his sermon, preached at Cork, about the same time, he declared to the preachers in his connection, that tliey had no right to baptize and administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper." His design was to improve the state of re- ligion in the church ; .and, as he said, he did not dare to leave the church. " Mr. Wesley, v» hen he was eighty years of age, in a private chamber of a public house in Bristol, England, was induced to lay his hands upon the head of Rev. Dr. Coke, a Presbyter of the Church of England, appointing him as a superiri' tendent over the missionary operations of the I^Ieth- odists in America. On' Dr. Coke's arrival in this country, he proceeded to lay his hands on the head of a Mr. Asbury, a layman, and thereby ordained him to DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 245 the same office of superintendent. These two men soon began to call themselves Bishops. When Mr. Wesley heard of this, he immediately rebuked their arrogation of an office and title, which he never pre- tended to have conveyed. In a letter to Mr. Asbury, he says : ' Hoio can you^ how dare you suffer yourself to he elected a Bishop? I shudder, I start at the very thought. For -my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's "sake, put an en(J to this.' "* This was the origin of Methodist Episcopacy. In the matter of the minis- try, the M^ethodists have the "form, without the power." Mr. Wesley could not give to another what he had never received himself. Not being a Bishop he could not confer Episcopal powers on Dr. Coke, and never intended to confer any such power.f The Episcopal Church cannot, of course, recognize an Episcopacy originating with a Presbyter of the Church of England, as Apostolic, and therefore valid. The Presbyterians originated . with John Calvin, at the Reformation. J They believe in one order of the min- istry. They hold; as Episcopalians do, to the doctrine of an Apostolic succession, with this difference ; we adhere to the three orders, as they have come down from the Apostles ; they hold to the parity of the min- istry, of which there is no historical proof, over three hundred years old. " The origin of the Congrega- * Richardson's " Reasons," &c. t Note B. } Note M. 21* 246 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. tionalists is commonly ascribed to Robert Brown, who organized a church in England in 1583, who were called Brownists." There may have* been some churches formed upon Congregational principles a few years earlier, in the reign of Edward VI. and Queen Mary. Brown's church, however, seems to have come to nought. About the beginning of the 17th century, Jolm Robinson appeared, who has been called the father of Modern Congregationalism. He' gathered a congregation in England, went to Holland, and thence a portion of his people emigi-ated to America in 1620. They rejected the doctrine of an Apostolical succession of the ministry. They regarded the congregation as Raving all power, in the matter of conferring the ministerial commission. Hence, the congregation having chosen one of their number a minister, had a right to ordain him, and having or- dained him he was thereby made a minister of Christ . The Episcopal Church holds to the principle, that no man can give to another a power that he does not himself possess; that a congregation of men cannot make ministers of God, any more than they can make Sacraments. A stream can never run higher than the fountain from which it proceeds. Christ called and sent his Apostles with power to send others. This was before the church had any organic form. He did not organize a congregation and give them power to commission his ministers. On the other hand the 247 ministers, with their commissions from Christ, gath- ered and organized the believers into congregations and churches.* The first Baptist Church of which there is any record, was organized in March, 1639, by Roger Williams, in Rhode Island. Mr. Williams was a minister of the Chm'ch of England. Mr. Eze- kiel Holliman, a layman, immersed Mr. Williams, and Mr. Williams in turn immersed Mr. Holliman. This denomination hold that by baptism, a person is admitted into the church of Christ, and that immersion is the only mode of baptism. Hence, all who have not been immersed are unhaptized. Mr. Holliman was not only not a minister, but he was nqt a member of the church, and so this layman, himself iinbaptized^ ad- ministers baptism to Mr. Williams. With such a baptism, Mr. Williams proceeds to baptize as a min- ister. And then and there commenced the Baptist Church. The first association of Baptists was held in London in 1689.f In respect to a body of Chris- tians who reject infants from the covenant, — who re- strict the administration of baptism to one mode, — whose baptism is to be traced to a layman, — whose ministerial commission came from' the congregation, and that only a little more than two hundred years ago, the Episcopal Church must be Protestant. To the Unitarians, who are still younger, — who have * Note N. t Note I. 248 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. neither the Apostolic Ministry nor the Apostolic faith, — the Quakers, who have neither the Ministry nor the Sacraments, — the Shakers, and the multitude of sects whose peculiarities I cannot describe, — to all these the Episcopal Church is simply Protestant. By quietly but firmly adhering to the " faith once deliv- ered to the Saints," — by holding to the Ministry as the Apostles ordained and transmitted it, she bears her faithful testimony against every form of error, whether it spring from Rome or Geneva^ England or America, • II. I now propose to notice very briefly the doc- trines of the Church. I. The teaching of the church on the subject of human depravity. I will here take occasion to remark, that the doctrines of the church are set forth in her Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies. In these she teaches that " all men are conceived and born in sin," * and " there is no health in us." f " Original sin is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the off- spring of Adam ; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is, of his own nature, in- clined to evil." J Such is the Church's teaching of the natural sin- fulness of man. * Baptismal Service. f Gen. Con. % Art. IX. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 249 2. What is her belief in the nature and necessity of a change of heart? In one of her Articles, ifid al- most everywhere in her offices, she teaches and incul- cates, as a fundamental doctrine of Scripture, man's utter inability to do anything good, without God's *' special gi*ace, which he must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer." The language of her 10th Article is : " The condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God ; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will." Morning and evening her ministers pray : " O God, make clean our hearts within us." In the collect for Ash Wednesday occurs this petition, " Create and make in us new and contrite hearts." 3. The doctrine of the Divinity of Christ is inter- woven with every part of the Prayef Book. The beams of the Sun of Righteo^isness shine forth from every page of the liturgy. The Divinity of the Son of God is, 'as it were, crystalized in the liturgy. The Church everywhere holds up Christ, in His divine na- ture, as the corner stone of all she has, or does, or hopes for, in the work of salvation. In the fact of His death she recognizes the great atoning sacrifice 250 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. for the sins of the whole world. In the all sufficiency of tha# atonement, she trusts and thus expresses hei belief in the language of her 31st Article: "The offer- ing of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, pro- pitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone." 4. The doctrine of the Trinity is held and taught as one of the first principles of the Gospel, and is fully set forth in the Liturgy and Articles. 5. Touching the doctrine of justification by faith, nothing can be more explicit than the language of the 11th Article : " We are acgounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deserv- ings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort." It is the less necessary to elaborate a scriptural ar- gument to prove, that these cardinal doctrines are a part of the " faith once delivered to the Saints," inas- much as we Tiold them in common, with what are termed the Orthodox or Evangelical bodies of Protes- tant Christians around us. The Church, in her 27th Article, sets forth the duty of bringing children to baptism in these words : " The baptism of young children is in anywise to be re- tained in the church, as most agreeable with the insti- tution of Christ." < 251 Infant baptism was practised universally through- out Christendom, until the 17th century, and is in ac- corctance with the practice of nineteen-twentieths of all Christendom at the present day. When God first established His church on earth, He decided, for reasons which it does not become us to inquire into, that His church should be composed of adults and infants. By His explicit command little children, at the age of eight days, were to be made members of the Church, by receiving the seal of the Covenant. When Christ was an infant, He too was circumcised. When He entered upon his ministry, he changed the seal^ but he did not change the coven- ant or the subjects of it. All the time he was on the earth infants were circumcised. The rite was held most dear by his own people, the Jews, and of it they were jealous, as of a privilege of inestimable value. They charged Christ with many things, and sought by every expedient in their power, to bring reproach upon Him, and dishonor upon his cause. They endeavored on every occasion, to stir up the people against him, and yet, strange to say, they never charged him with depriving them of the privilege of placing their chil- dren within the covenant. Very many things in the^ Mosaic Chnrch were to be abrogated. Christ did not leave either his friends or his enemies in any doubt, as to what he taught. If there was to be a change so fundamental as this — one which touched a tender 252 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. spot ill the heart of every child of Abraham — one that was so completely to revolutionize the mode of membership — how can we account fox the Savior's silence ? We are sometimes tauntingly challenged to produce a single instance of infant baptism, in the New Testament, as if the want of such a record was an unanswerable argument in proof, that the practice is unscriptural. That very silence is one of the strong- est arguments in its favor. If children had been ad- mitted to the church from the time lof Abraham, a period of more than eighteen hundred years, and they were to continue to be members of the covenant, through all time to come, why should anything be said about it, what occasion would there be to speak of it? If, on the other hand, this custom of eighteen hundred years was to be abrogated, and children were no longer to be members of the church, then we should look for some explicit mention of it. In the second century we find this custom prevailing everywhere throughout the Christian Church; nobody objecting to it as an inno- vation, or as a new doctrine, which the Apostles did not teach. If it did not have the sanction of Christ and His Apostles, how could it have been thus early introduced universally, in the church, with no record of a single objection from any quarter, and tliat, too, in an age, when men were living, who had conversed with those who had seen the Apostles, and this, too, in the purest period of the church, when the least indica- 253 tion of error in doctrine was promptly met and promptly puc down? While the date of the introduction of every heresy in the Christian Church can be readily pointed out, the most learned opponent of infant bap- tism has never yet been able to adduce a particle of credible historical testimony which tells the time and the place where this error took its rise.* To say that an unconscious child is not a fit subject for membership in the church of the living God, is to accuse the Almighty of folly. Let it be remembered that the idea of infant membership of the church was not a suggestion of Abraham, but a command of Jeho- vah. • It is sometimes objected, that Christ came to bring the Mosaic dispensation to an end, with all that pertained to it. If this were so, the chain of the argu- ment is not long enough to reach Infant Baptism, for that was not a Mosaic^ but a Patriarchal institution. As to the 7yiode of baptism, the church considers that the application of water to the person, by the min- ister, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," is valid baptism, whether it be by aspersion or by immersion. Sacraments are essentially symbols, and it is plain that the signifi- cance of a symbol cannot depend upon its quantity. There must be water in the sacrament of baptism, as there must be bread and wine in the sacrament of the * Note E. 22 254 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Lord's Supper. To the communicant who receives in faith, a crumb of bread and a drop of wine are to him as essentially a sacrament as a loaf of bread and cup of wine possibly could be. Moreover, the word hap- tize, whatever it may mean when used by heathen classics, does not mean exclusively immersion as used in Holy Scripture. If we would know the definition of this term as employed in the Gospel, we are not to go to the dictionaries for its signification, but to the Bible. There is no passage in the Old or New Testament, where it can be shown -that this word means immer- sion. The most that can be said is, that in certain texts immersion is possible, and perhaps probable. On the other hand, there are texts in which the word occurs, where it not only does not, but cannot mean immersion. Thus we are told that the Israelites were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.* And yet the Israelites were on " dry land," and " un- der the cloud." There is, then, a baptism which a person may receive while standing on d7'y land. Such a baptism cannot, by any possibility, be immersion. Again ; Christ promised that his disciples should be baptized with the Holy Ghost, f Thus the Savior explicitly declared, that when the Apostles should receive the Holy Spirit it would be a baptism. On * I Cor. X. 2. — Exodus xiv. 16-22 1 Acts i. 5. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 255 the day. of Pentecost, they received the fulfillment of this promise. In what way ? Let St. Peter answer : '* This is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel ; and it shall come to pass, in the last days, (saith God,) I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh."* We have here the declaration of a prophet that the Holy Spirit would be ^'•poured ouV We have the declaration of the Savior, that the Holy Spirit would be given to his Apostles, and when given, it would be a baptism. We have the testimony of St. Peter, that the promise of Christ, and the prophecy of Joel were both fulfilled on the day of Pentecost ; and so we have here, on an authority that cannot be gainsaid, a definition of the Wbrd baptism, viz : ^'•pouring ; " and thus baptism and pouring are one and the same thing. Again, we are told by St. Mark that " the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not." " And when they come from the market, except they baptize {BanTlGuvTai) ^ "they eat not." In our Eng- lish version it is translated wash. Here the applica- tion of a small quantity of water to a small portion of the body is called a baptism. No one will pretend, that every time a Jew went home from the market, he plunged into the water all over. We learn the custom from the context , " Except they wash {vlipuvrai) their bands oft, they eat not." Says St. Mark : " Many *Acts II. 16, 17. 256 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the baptism (BaTrncrpwf) of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, and tables."* In our version it is ren- dered washings. These baptisms were purifications from legal or ceremonial uncleanness. Does anybody suppose, that every time a table or a couch was defiled by the merest touch of something legally unclean, that it was immersed in water ? The thing would be utterly impracticable. Besides, there is no evidence whatever that the Jews ever did any such thing. If you would know what these baptisms were, and how they were performed, you have only to turn to the Book of Num- bers,! where the whole ceremony is described, and consists in sprinkling water upon the furniture to be cleansed, with a bunch of hyssop. For this purpose families were supplied with " water-pots of stone, con- taining two or three firkins apiece." J The word bap- tize has a generic meaning, similar to our English word travel. A person is said to travel when he walks when he rides upon a horse, when he sails in a ship. A person is baptized when lie is immersed, when he is sprinkled, and when water is poured upon him. The ministers of the Episcopal Church baptize by immer- sion, when that mode is required by those who are to receive it. The almost universal practice is, however, by aspersion. To hold to immersion as the only mode =»*^Mark vii. 4. fNum. xix. 18. | John ii. 6. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 257 of baptism, would involve ministers in a serious di- lemma. The command of Christ is to " go into all the woiid and preach the Gospel to every creature, and baptize them." There is no exception made in favor of any class whatever. If immersion be the only mode, then a person who is on a dying bed cannot be baptized. If he have an acute disease in his body^ his soul cannot be admitted into covenant with God, and cannot have the benefit, that pertains to a covenant relation to God. What is disease but a fruit of the faU ? In this case the effect of sin in a perishing body is made an effectual barrier against the admission of the soul into the kingdom of God ; for Christ has said, — "Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he caffnot enter into the kingdom of God."* Can we suppose that the Savior would institute any such mode of admission into his spiritual kingdom, as could be enjoyed only by those who were favored with good bodily health ? What has the condition of a man's mortal body to do with the salvation of his im- mortal spirit ? Baptism is the seal of the covenant, and may be applied to every creature, whatever the condition of his body. Christ's spiritual kingdom is brought into no such relationship to the infirmities of human life, and the salvation of the soul is put into no such condition of dependence, upon the health of ' * John III. 5, 22* 258 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the body. Leaving the doctrines of the church, we pass to a brief notice of its worship. I have thus far considered those distinctive princi- ples of the church which are necessary to its existence: the Word, the Sacraments, and the Ministry. I now proceed to consider the distinctive, features of our church, which, though important, are not absolutely essential, and may be modified.* III. The public services of the sanctuary are con- ducted according to a prescribed form. What is the authority and what is the utility of a Liturgy ? I hardly need remark, that forms of prayer are no new thing. If you ask me where they originated, I answer in Heaven. The very first suggestion 'of a precom- posed form of divine service, came from God himself. Liturgies are, therefore, no human invention. When the Tabernacle had been erected, and the people gathered into it, God gave to Moses a form of words wherewith he should bless the people when they departed, saying : " The Lord bless thee, and keep thee," etc.f When an Israelite brought to the priest " the first fruits," he was required to repeat a certain form of words. Just before the death of Moses, God commanded him to write a song commemorative of God's mercies, which the Israelites and their descend- ^ Preface to the Prayer Book. t Num. vi. 22-26 DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 259 ants were required to use. In the synagogues the Jews had a Liturgy in the time of Christ. In this service he himself joined. He rebuked the Jews for many things, but never for using a Liturgy. He reproved them for formality^ but never for using forms of prayer. He reproved the Pharisees for their pride, and formality, and long " prayers, which they made standing at the corners of the streets, to be seen of men*" These prayers were made to attract the public attention, and so to win the praise of passers-by, and, therefore, they were probably extemporaneous. The Jews had never been accustomed to any other than a Liturgical form of worship. When John the Baptist appeared, who was the appointed, forerunner of Christ, whose ministry was not of the Jewish econ- omy, while the Christian church was not yet estab- lished, he very naturally prepared a service suited to his peculiar mission. He gave to his disciples a form of prayer. When Christ entered upon his ministry, he con- tinued to attend upon the Temple and Synagogue service, and sometimes took part in that service.* When his disciples came to him, with the request that he would furnish them with a form of prayer, as John had done for his disciples, he did not say that John did that, which was indeed allowed in the Jewish service, *Lixkeiv. 16, 20. 260 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. but was not to be permitted in the more spiritual wor- ship of the Christian Church. So far from this, he immediately framed a form of prayer, gave it to his disciples and told them to use it. And what is not a little remarkable, this form is taken mainly from the Jewish Liturgy.* It is sometimes objected by those who are not accustomed to a Liturgical service, that prayers in a particular form of words cannot come from the heart. When our Savior was in the garden, on the night of his betrayal, he prayed in the midst of the agonies of that awful hour. Think you the*prayer he offered to his Father, did not come from his heart ? Yet he used a form ! He prayed three times, using the same words.f Again, when hanging on the cross he prayed. Did ever mortal man doubt, that the prayer upon the cross came from the heart of that crucified Savior? And yet that prayer was a form. This prayer was : " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ; " a quotation from the 22d Psalm. The last sentence that fell from his lips, ere he gave up the ghost, was taken from the 31st Psalm : " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Thus the Savior of the world died with a. form of prayer upon his lips. The Apos- tles, like their divine master, were accustomed to the . Liturgical worship of the Jews ; — they, with him, at- tended the Temple and the Synagogue service. Such * Note F. t Matthew xxvi. 36, 44. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 261 was the strength of their attachment to a Liturgy, and so firm the habit of using a form, that on the occa- sion of the liberation of St. Peter from prison, when their hearts were overflowing with joy, and when, if ever, they would spontaneously express their gratitude in an extemporaneous thanksgiving, they employed a form, " they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said," &c. The form has been recorded by St. Luke. It is chiefly from a Psalm of David.* "We are not then surprised to find the churches which they planted, employing forms of prayer in their wor- ship. For fifteen hundred years Liturgies were every- where used in the Church of Christ. The Christian VvTorld was pleasantly surprised some years ago, by the announcement that the celebrated traveller. Dr. Bu- chanan, had discovered a church of Syrian Christians w^io had, for hundreds of years, remained in conceal- ment from the Christian world, in the mountain fast- ness of the coast of Malabar. They had the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and they had also a Liturgical form of worship. Their tradition is, that St. Thomas visited their country and founded their church. They have thus been preserved by the great Head of the Church, and after the lapse of so many ages, come forward in this nineteenth century, to bear their testimony to Apostolic doctrines and usages. * Acts iv. 23; 30. 262 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. * At the E-eformation the English Church retained a prescribed form of worship. From that church we re- ceived the Book of Common Prayer, which, with a few unimportant alterations, is now used in the Pro- testant Episcopal Church.* The spiritual" excellency of the service, and the divine authority for forms of prayer, have taught us to heed the injunction of the Apostle, to '•'• holdfast the form of sound loordsP Many of the Protestant Communions, who do not have the Apostolic Ministry, yet retain forms of prayer. It may be safely said, that about nineteen twentieths of all Christendom have some kind of a Liturgy. We see then, that extemporaneous modes of wor- ship are, comparatively, a novelty, and ' are practised by only a very small fraction of Christendom. The difference between our mode of worship and that of those denominations of Christians around us, who re- pudiate a Liturgy, is not, as it is sometimes stated, a question whether divine service should be conducted with a form of prayer, or without a form of prayer. All use 'deform. There is no such thing as a formless mode of worship. They who pretend to discard every appearance of form, are sometimes the most formal. Thus the Quakers are rigidly formal in their worship. When a minister rises in the pulpit, to conduct the ^IToteG. • DR. RANDALL'S J^ECTURE. 263 services of public worship, he says, and that very properly : '•''Let us pray.'''' What does he mean ? Simply this : he asks the congregation to unite with him in prayer to Almighty God. He does not say, let me pray ; but let us pray, — you and me. Yet, he is the only person who prays aloud. How then are the people to do as he has asked them to do ? They are to pray by miiting with him ; i. e., he frames a pe- tition, speaks it aloud, and so hands it over to them, and they take it, and unite with him in offering it to God, as their petition. He makes the form, and they use it. The difference then between such and our- selves is this : that inasmuch as we must have a form of prayer, they'prefer to ti'ust to their minister to make it for them on the occasion, without knowing what it is to be ; and we prefer to have one already made which we know all about ; so that we pray with the spirit, and with the understanding also. The Church proceeds, in matters of public worship, on the princi- ple, that the house of God is the ^^ house of prayer ^ That the great business of the Lord's people on the Lord's day, is to worship him in the beauty of holi- ness. The people cannot commission any one else to do this for them. . There are no proxies in the duties •of religion. We cannot delegate to another a duty which God requires of us. Our form of worship is framed upon the principle, that there are to be no spec- tators in the congregation of God's people. All sorts 264 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ♦ and conditions of men are there for a purpose, antl that purpose is the worship of God. One, as much as another, is required to acknowledge his sinfulness, — invoke the divine forgiveness, — praise God for his blessings, and ask for his future grace and guidance. All then, young and old, should join in the services of the Sanctuary. Some good people seem to entertain the idea, that prayer, in order to be prayer, must he extemporaneous; that only such prayers come from the heart. They -forget, that while all true prayer does come and must come from the heart, i. e., it is and must be the sincere language of the soul, yet words, whether extemporaneous or written, do not come from the heart but from the head. "What God requires, and what the necessities of our being demand is, that the words we use, (and which serve only as the vehicle of our petitions), should be such as properly and reverently express our sincere desires to God. Prayers are not orations. They are not addressed to men, but to God. They are not designed to produce an effect on earth, but in heaven. God is not particu- larly pleased with a variety. " He is the same yester- day, to-day, and forever." Some persons fancy that they should tire of the use of the same modes of expression, Sunday after Sunday^ The proper answer to such is this : they do not tire of the use of the same modes of expression, Sunday after Sunday, where they now are. If the extemporaneous DR. Randall's lecture. ^G5 prayers of the most gifted minister, were to be writ- ten down, as he offers them, on every bccasion of public worship, for. the space of a year, it would be found that there is but a very little variety in the de- votional exercises of his pulpit. Again, if some of our beloved brethren in other societies, were as famil- iar with the Prayer Book, as they might be, they would know to what source they are sometimes in- debted, for some of the choicest passages in the ex- temporaneous prayers of their Pastors. Man is so constituted that he cannot serve two masters at the same time, either in his inner or in his outer life. A deep exercise of devotion and an active exercise of the mind cannot well be carried on, in the same soul at one and the same time. If the mind of a minister is in a deep study as to what he shall say and how he shall say it, while he is thus engaged in searching after thoughts and suitable language in which to ck)the them, there cannot be a very lively exercise of the spirit of pure devotion in his heart. But what is the condition of the hearers in the mean time? Their minds are exercised, because they must be on the alert, since they know not what is coming. And when the words come, it may be that they are not all of them suitable, or are not grammatically express- ed, or come- after much stammering and hesitation, or they are in the form of petitions for things, which the worshipper does not want. The involuntary response 23 -• 26^ PITTS-STP.EET CHAPEL LECTURES of his mind is : "I do not agree to that." Now amid this various mental activity what has become of the spirit of devotion, the earnest feeling of supplication, the real soul of all prayer? It is well nigh strangled in this unhappy conflict of thought. Let us for a moment see how these objections, to an extempora- neous mode of worship are obviated ^in the use of the Liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church. When the worshipper enters the Church, he feels that he is entering the house of God. There is to him a sanc- tity pertaining to it, which does not attach to any other place, since, when once consecrated to the wor- ship of God, it is " separated from all unhallowed, worldly, and common uses." * He takes ofl" his hat when he enters the door, and he does not put it on until he passes out of the door. He does not do in the house of God, wha+ would be deemed disrespect- ful in the house of his neighbor. On taking his seat, he bows his head and silently invokes God's blessii^g. Very soon the minister appears, clad in his clerical robes. But some of my hearers may say, but tell us, what is the authority and utility of clerical vestments ? I am happy to answer, for I am here for the purpose of explanation. As to the authority, 1 have only to say, that God has once, in the Mosaic dispensation, expressed His pleasure in this regard, and He has * Office of Cousecratiou. . 267 never annulled thai expression of His will. It was in His view fitting,- that his ministers should wear a vestment, when officiating at His altar, which they did not wear on any other occasion. The lon^ cus- tom of the Christian Church has sanctioned the use of clerical robes. Although we have no positive law on the subject, yet it is proper that a minister in the House of God, should appear in a habit, which is peculiar to the services of the Sanctuary, and being worn on no other occasions, is identified with the min- isterial office. Again: it serves to remove from the minds of the congregation, all occasion for the indul- gence of idle and wandering thoughts. It matters not who is to officiate, whether their own Rector or a stranger; there is no temptation to curious specula- tion as to his appearance, whether well or ill clad, in fashion or out of fashion. All frivolous distinctions of this sort, which serve to distract the attention of the congregation are effectually and happily concealed. In this regard all ministers are on an equality. The mind of the worshipper is at once put to rest, as to the mode of the service, whoever may be the officiat- ing clergyman. His spirit of devotion is exposed to no serious disturbance, as to the matter of the prayers or the manner of conducting the services. The wor- shipper has nothing to do, but to pour out his heart as best he can in prayer and praise, and devoutly listen to the teachinofs of the Word of God. It is sometimes 268 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. objected that there are many and unmeaning changes of position in our service. It is very true, there are in our mode of worship frequent changes of position. When we pray we kneel ; when we praise we stand ; when we listen to the Word we sit. Our position is made to conform to the nature of the particular service in which we are engaged. These frequent changes, so far from being objectionable, physically considered are a relief, since they serve to prevent the fatigue which necessarily attends, a long continu- ance in one position. As all persons have not a voice to sing, and yet all persons ought to join audibly in some form of praise, the church provides that a portion of the Psalms of David shall be read responsively, by minister and people, morning and evening. A lesson from the Old Testament and one from the New are also read both morning and evening. In addition to these some part of one of the Epistles and a portion of one of the Gospels, together with the Ten Commandments, are read in the morning. There is no service in any part of Christendom, where provision is made for the daily reading of so much Holy Scripture as in the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. At every service we are required to repeat the articles of our belief, in the form of a creed. The church has a creed, because she is the Church. There can be no such thing as a Christian DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 269 Church without a Christian creed. There are some persons, I am aware, who affect to have no" creed. But Christ has effectually settled the practicability of such a theological anomaly. Nobody can go to heaven without a creed. Creed is belief. Christ has said, " He that believeth not sliall be damned^ The services of the church are so arranged that every prominent event in the Savior's life, every car- dinal doctrine of the Gospel, are regularly brought to the attention of the congregation throughout the year, so that, if Ijie people are not thoroughly instructed in every part of the Gospel system of salvation, it is 1;heir own fault. The church is too good a mother to •her children to entrust so vital a matter to the faith- fulness of her individual ministers. A minister may be false to his charge — he may swerve from the faith; but however unsound he may be in the pulpit, he is compelled* to be Orthodox in the reading desk; and when the desk and the pulpit begin to contradict each other, the people will soon discover that something is out of joint, and will take measures to have the un- sound member reduced or cut off. " The Church of Christ is the ground and pillar of the truth ; " as such, it is, and ever is to be, the great Conservator of the Truth. It is the divinely ordained Guardian of the " Faith* once delivered to the Saints." The most effectual instrumentality of doing this office is by- means of a liturgy. It is, under God, the great safe- 23* 270 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. guard of the people. The devil never shows his mar- vellous skill more effectually, than when he seeks to undermine the faith of Christians. He rarely, if ever, begins with the laity. He would make but slow headway if he did; for if he succeeded in making an apostate, he would only count one. But if he can poison the mind of a minister, and make a heretic of him, he has seized hold of the long end of a lever, with which he may tip a whole congregation out of the Ark of Salvation. A . minister who is not tied to a liturgy will. do as much mischief in praying heresy, as he ^ill in preaching it ; so that by skilfully con- forming his prayers to his preaching, the change is* unperceived until it has become so great, that it can no longer be disguised, and then it is too late to avert the consequences.* The propriety and necessity of a liturgy have been acknowledged by distinguished non-Episcopal divines. The Presbyterians, in the time of Cromwell, under- took to conduct public worship after an extemporane- ous manner; they soon changed their mind, and adopted a form of prayer. The Presbyterians of Scotland, at the Reformation, used a liturgy. Rich- ard Baxter prepared a liturgy, and sought to have it introduced into public use. John Wesley set forth a liturgy for the use of the Methodists in this country * Note H. ''^':mmv f M DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 271 John Calvin, at Geneva, composed a liturgy for the Sunday service. Of the excellence of the English Prayer Book, of which our own is almost an exact copy, Dr. Adam Clark, the distinguished Methodist, thus speaks : " It is the gi-eatest effort of the Refor- mation, next to the translation of the Scriptures into the English language As a form of devotion it has no equaj in any part of the Universal Church of God Next to the Bible, it is the Book of my understanding, and of my heart." Robert Hall, the eloquent English Baptist, thus speaks of it : "I believe that the . evangelical purity of its sentiments, the chastened fervor of its devotions, and the majestic simplicity of its language, have combined to place it ' in the very first rank of uninspired compositions." Dr. Doddridge, the eminent commentator, who was a Congregationalist, thus speaks of it : " The language is so plain as to be level to the capacity of the mean- est, and yet the sense is so noble as to raise the capaci- ties of the greatest." These are the voluntary testi- monies of a. Methodist J Baptist^ and Congregationalist^ of whom the least that can be said is, that they were the first among their equals. We come now to the consideration of the last of the distinctive principles of the Episcopal Church, which is, its Polity. IV. The government of the Church is Episcopal because its chief ministers are Bishops, and not be- 272 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. cause it is chiefly governed by Bishops. The Bishops in our church have but little ecclesiastical power. Their duty is to ordain Deacons, and in conjunction with the Presbytery, to admit Deacons to the Priest- hood, — to consecrate churches, — preside at conven- tions, and to perform the Apostolic rite of Confirma- tion, or the laying of hands on baptized persons, who desire to take upon themselves their baptismal vows and thereby make a profession of their faith before the world. This custom, commenced by the Apostles, has been continued in the church from that day to this.* The government of the church is purely republican. It is strikingly analogous to that of the Municipal, State, and General Government, in this country. I cannot better describe it, than by giving a brief outline of its practical operation. A number of laymen meet together and organize a parish, by the choice of two Wardens and a Board of Vestry -men. To them is com- mitted the management of all the temporal affairs oi the parish. The members of the parish choose theii own minister. Once a year, on Easter Monday, parish meetings are held for the choice of parish offi- cers, and for the election of delegates to the Diocesan Convention. These lay delegates, with the ministers of the several parishes, meet annually in Convention. The Bishop presides, but has no other voice than that of *NoteK. 273 a presiding oiiicer. The clergy and laity assemble to- gether, but form, in fact, two distinct houses ; and when it is so required by any delegation, they must vote separately. In such a case there must be a concur- rence of both orders, the clerical and the lay. Thus the laity represent the House of Representatives in our State Legislature, — the clergy, the Senate, and the Bishop, the Governor. This Diocesan Convention appoint a Standing Committee, consisting of three laymen, and three clergymen who are a Council of Advice to the Bishop. The Bishop has no right to ordain a Deacon or a Priest until the consent and rec- ommendation of this Committee is first obtained. This Committee answers to the Governor' s Council. The State, or Diocesan Convention choose four clergy- men and four laymen to represent the Diocese, or State, in the General Convention. This General Con- vention meets once in three years, and consists of like delegations, from every diocese in the Union, where the church has an organization. The Bishops of the church meet by themselves, and answer to the Senate of the United States. The clerical and lay deputies meet together and organize, by choosing one of their number as President. Both laity and clergy com- monly vote together ; but if the delegation of any dio- cese require it, the vote must be taken by orders, the clergy and laity voting separately ; and there must be a concurrence of both orders, or the vote is not carried. 274 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. A measure must have the concurrence of the House of Bishops, before it can become a law. The influence of the laity in the legislation of the church may be seen by this illustration. If a measure should pass the House of Bishops by a unanimous vote, and coming to the lower house, should receive the vote of every clergyman, and then should be lost by one ma- jority on the part of the laity, it could not become a law. Such is the organization of our National Eccle- siastical Congress, which commonly embraces many of the ablest men in the church. Our polity secures healthful discipline. Every cler- gyman must belong to some Episcopal jurisdiction. There can be no such thing as an Episcopal clergy- man at large. If a stranger present himself to me as a clergyman of the church, the first question is : Where do you belong ? He cannot call himself a cosmopolite, — as belonging every where, and having a home nowhere. He must have a canonical, if not a " local habitation." If he answer : Kansas, Texas, Oregon, or California, I have only to turn to the list of the clergy in that diocese and ascertain the fact. Our parishes choose their own ministers ; but th^y do not make them, and they cannot unmake them; nor can they retain them after the church has suspended or degraded them. If a clergyman commits a crime, for which he should be displaced from the Ministry, he is tried by an Ecclesiastical Ccurt, and if found guilty DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. " 275 and sentenced to be degraded, that sentence is passed upon him, and he is at once put out of the Ministry, and this fact is forthwith communicated to every dio- cese in the United States. He cannot henceforth offi- ciate anywhere as*an Episcopal clergyman, nor is there any canonical provision for his future restoration to the Ministry. It matters not how influential his par- ish. They may love him so well as to wink at his crime ; they may -be more than willing to forgive ; they may seek to cover up his iniquity, and strive to white-wash the stain of his criminality, but the church stretches out the hand of her discipline, and takes him from these fond admirers, and puts him upon his trial by a court composed of his peers. He has committed an offence against the church, against the cause of Christ, to the scandal of true religion, and the church is bound to protect that religion, by purging herself of a corrupt member.* His parish is as impotent as is the family of a man, who has committed a high crime and has been arrested by the civil authority. What a contrast between such a discipline and that which ob- tains in other systems, where a congregation have only to throw their arms around their minister, how- ever corrupt, and he maintains his position as their preacher, to the great reproach of religion. And should he be tried and found guilty, and sentenced to * Note L. 276 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. degradation from the Ministry, there is no power to execute it ; and he may, if he please, go back to his former congregation, if they will have him, or gather a new one, perhaps in the midst of the scene of his iniquity. • Such are some of the distinctive principles of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as seen in its Ministry, Doctrines, Worship, and Polity. I am glad to say, that some of the distinctive features of the ^^iscopal Church are becoming less distinctive. The features themselves remain in all their fullness, but they are becoming less and less distinctive,, in consequence of the happy and very promising changes, which are going on in other religious bodies about us. The time was, when an educated ministry, Gothic church edifices, the use of organs, chanting in public service, the word Church as signifying a place of worship, the term " going to church," observing the festival of Christmas, the decoration of churches with ever- greens at that festive season, using a Liturgy, Avear- ing clerical vestments, were distinctive features of the Episcopal Church, but they are so no longer. Once, special pains were taken, in the erection of a place of worship to have square windows, and these, in two rows like a dwelling-house, — to secure the sever- est simplicity in the architecture. These places of worship were called " meeting-houses," and attendance at divine worship was termed ^'- going to meeting.''^ It DR. Randall's lecture. 277 would be regarded as hardly less than an insult, to apply these terms at the present day. Once, it was considered a sin to have instrumental music in the Sanctuary, while there is now hardly a place of wor- ship, in city or town, that does not have an organ. And it is by no means uncommon to hear the church chants beautifully sung, in the congregations of the various religious bodies. If a stranger were to con- clude that every ^ne gothic edifice he saw now-a-days, was an Episcopal Church, he would make a great mis- take. The denominations, who in former days in- veighed most strongly against an educated ministry, have now more colleges than the Episcopal Chm-ch. The gown is becoming a very common clerical vest- ment. As to crosses, if we were to place gilt crosses upon our churches, as some of our Congregational brethren are doing, in this good old Puritan State of Massachusetts, we should no doubt be called Puseyites. But crosses will not harm them ; they never harmed us, though their appearance has caused much alarm in times past. The recent introduction of Liturgies into public worship, among several denominations, is one of the most significant signs of an inclination to return to primitive usage. There is one other pleas- ing and promising evidence of progress in the right direction. It is the fact, that so large a proportion of our clergy are from the various denominations. The late Bishop Griswold stated in 1841, that of two hun- 24 278 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. dred and eighty-five clergymen ordained by him, two hundred and seven of them, came into the ministry of the Episcopal Church, from other denominations. There are at the present time upwards of eighteen hundred clergymen in the Episcopal Church, about twelve hundred of whom, it is estimated, came into the church from other folds. May the change con- tinue to go on, until not only the features but the principles of the Church shall be less anc^ less dis- tinctive ; — until there " shall be but one fold and one shepherd." With a ministry so Apostolic, with a Liturgy so evangelical, with a Polity so purely republican, do you wonder, that I am a Churchman, and never can be any thing else? Do you not wonder that you yourselves are not? But let us never lose sight of the important fact, that the church, and ministry, and worship, are not an end^ but a means. The end is the salvation of the soul, and the glory of God. The conditions of that salvation are, repentance of sin and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. May God graciously grant us His Holy Spirit, that we may all comply with these conditions and through the merits of Christ's righ- teousness, find a place at His right hand, in His King- dom above, to go no more out forever. Amen. DE. Randall's lecture. 279 NOTES. Note A. — The Puritans of New England held that religious toleration was wrong. When they left England for America, it was not for the purpose of maintaining tod enjoying the principle of toleration. This point is susceptible of abundant proof; hence their perfect consistency, though great wickedness, in hanging the Quaker, banishing the Baptist, and imprisoning the Churchman. Hutchinson says " that toleration was preached against as a sin in rulers, which would bring down the judg- ments of Heaven upon the land." — Hist. I. 75. Says Judge Story : " When Sir Richard Saltonstall wrote to them his admirable letter, which pleads with such Catholic enthusiasm for tolera- tion, the harsh and brief reply was^: ' God forbid our love for truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors.' — Yes, the very men who asked from Charles the Second, after his restoration, liberty of con- science and worship for themselves, were deaf, and dumb, and blind, when it was demanded by his commissioners for Episcopalians and oth- ers." — Story's Misc. p. 65. The Puritans felt much aggrieved by the burdens laid upon them in England, for the support of the established church. But as soon as they have a State of their own, they not only join the church to it, but compel Churchmen to pay for the support of their Congregational worship. The manner of enforcing the collection of this tax is illusti-atcd by a case which occurred in the town of Stratford, Conn. " The Episcopal parish objected to paying taxes to the Congregationalists, on the ground that they were legally exempt by the law of England ; and upon their refusal, Timothy Titherton, one of the church wardens, and John Marey, one of the vestrymen, were arrested about midnight, Dec. 12, 1780, and com- pelled to walk eight miles to jail, where they were confined without fi<"e or light until they paid the sums demanded." — Chapin's Puritanism, p. 121. Note B. — The Methodists have a Liturgy, in the form of certain ofiicos, wliich they rarely use. Their Bishops have a degree of ecclesias- 280 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. * tical power, which more nearly approaches that of the Bishops of the Church of Rome than any Protestant body of Christians in the world. The people have no voice in the choice of their preachers. The preachers have no voice as to their locality. At the annual conferences, the Bishops assign to each minister his place for the year ; and no preacher can re- main in one parish more than two years consecutively. The laity have no representation in their conferences, and, therefore, no vote in ecclesi- astical legislation. In no Protestant communion are the laity so com- pletely excluded from the management of the general affairs of their church, as among the Methodists. The evils of this feature of their polity are beginning to be felt. This feeling of dissatisfaction led to a division in 1830. The seceders organized their sect, on the principles of Congregationalism. They have thirteen hundred preachers, and sixty thousand members, and are called Protestant Methodists. Another division took place in 1847. This division call themselves the True Wesleyan Methodist Church. They have about six hundred preachers and twenty thousand members. Note C. — " Timothy was ordained an Apostle by the laying on of the hands of St. Paul." — 2 Tim. 1. 6. Some allege that the passage in 1 Tim. iv. 14, refers to Timothy's ordination. " Eminent authority has declared the word 'Presbytery' to mean the office to which " Timothy was ordained, not the persons who or- dained him ; so that the passage would read, " with the laying on of hands to confer the presbyterate,' or presbytership, or clerical office, in which view the ordainer of Timothy was St. Paul himself, as mentioned in 2 Tim. i. 6. "Jerome, Ambrose, and other ancients, and Calvin, interpret * preshy- terium,' in that place, not an assembly, but the office to which Timothy was promoted." " Should it be said, however, that the word ' presbyter- ate, or presbytership,' proves Timothy to have been then ordained a pres- byter merely, we would neutralize that argument by appealing to 1 Thess. li. 6, (comp. with i. 1,) where he is called an Apostle." — ** Episcopacy Tested hy Scripture,^' pp. 19, 20. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 281 Note D. — It has been a law of the church, from the Apostolic age, that the ministerial commission can only come from Christ, through the Apostles, in an unbroken succession. So important did the church con- sider this to be, that she made a rule, that at every consecration of a Bishop, there should be, at Icast,^ three Bishops present and joining in the laying on of hands, sa that if, in the cours'e of time, a break should occur in any single line •(which has never yet been shown), there are others which still hold good. The burden of proof lies upon those who, denying this Apostolic succession, assert that there has been a break, to show where and when this break took place. Note E. — Tertullian, a Presbyter of Carthage, in the second cen- tury, is sometimes quoted as authority against infant baptism. It is true he did oppose infant baptism. But why ? Because it was a novelty — because it was not Apostolic '? O, no ; but because he was a follower of a man by the name of Montanus, who called himself " the Comforter promised by Christ to His disciples," and pretending to be inspired, had the wicked presumption to say that Chi-ist had conceded too much to the weakness of the people, and so had given an imperfect rule of life. Hence Montanus laid down very severe rules of religion, and Tertullian, being naturally an austere man, embraced his sentiments, and became his ablest defender. Among other strange notions indulged by Tertul- lian, was this : " that sin after baptism could hardly be pardoned." Hence it was that he argued for the delay of the baptism of infants. For the same reason he would have adults of certain dispositions put off the reception of this Sacrament. The very fact of such an objection from such a man is a strong argument in favor of infant baptism, inasmuch as it shows that, in the second century, infant baptism was practised, and was not objected to because it was an innovation, but because of a heret- ical notion about sin after baptism. Note F. — " A learned Rabbi tells us that Ezra composed eighteen forms of prayer, which were enjoined by the Great Council, that cverj man might have them in his mouth ; " to which he adds a statement of the custom which prevailed, that the people should say " Amen," — 24* 282 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Kip's Double Witness. These eighteen prayers may be fininci in " Pri- deaux's Connections.'* In Home's Introduction, Vol. III.,*may be found the following ex- tract from the Jewish Liturgy, with which our Savior was familiar, and from which He mainly took tlie petitions embodied in the form which he gave to his disciples : " Our Father, which art in heaven, be gracious unto us. Oh Lord, our God ; hallowed be Thy name, and let the remem- brance of Thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let Thy kingdom reign over us now and forever. The holy men of old said, remit and forgive unto all men, whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For Thine is the kingdom, and Thou shall reign in glory forever, and forevermore." Note G. — Before the Reformation, the Liturgy was only in Latin, and was much the same as the present Roman breviary and missal. One of the fruits of the Reformation was the purging of the Liturgy of cor- rupt innovations, and its translation into English. " Edward VI. ap- pointed the Archbishop of, Canterbury, with other learned and discreet Bishops and Divines, to draw an order of divine worship, having res- pect to the pure religion of Christ, taught in the Scripture, and to the practice of the Primitive Church." It was the wish of Cranmer and his associates to retain whatever was sanctioned by Scripture and primitive usage, and to reject nothing but what savored of superstition or tended to errors in doctrine and worship. Many of the collects retained by them, and which now make a part of our Prayer Brok, have been used in the public worship of the church, for fifteen hundi-ed years. The English Prayer Book, substantially as it now is, having been ratified by Convocation and by an Act of Parliament, was used for the first time, by authority, in all the churches on Whit-Sunday, 1549. The Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States v/as ratified by the General Convention, in October, 1789, and docs not differ essentially from that of the Church of England. The services for Festivals and Fasts, which are provided in the Prayer Book, are happily adapted to the necessities of our spiritual nature, and DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE, 283 are founded upon the authority of Holy Scripture. Festivals and Fasts were cnjoined'by God upon the Jews, and were obscrA^ed by our Lord and His Apostles. Their necessity has been acknowledged by those bodies of Christians who, in their haste to depart, apparently, as far as possible from the church, undertook to do without them. Thus our Puritan Fathers. made it penal to observe Christmas, but ordained a Festi- val in the Autumn, in the form of a Thanksgiving Day. They would not keep the fast of Lent, but they set apart a day in the Spring, as a " day of fasting, humiliation and prayer.'* The church had, from the early ages, observed a fast of forty days^ wherein the ordinary means of gi*ace were used, after an extraordinary manner. Those bodies of Christians who discard this practice, have felt the necessity of such a season, and have virtually confessed it, in that species of substitute found in their "four days meetings" or "pro- tracted meetings," and other extraordinary services, connected com- monly, with what are known as modern "revivals." "We think their own experience is proving that the " old paths" are the better way. Note H. — The office of " the Church of the Living God, as the ground and pillar of the truth," is not only to spread that truth, but to conserve it. This, the Protestant Episcopal Church does, not only by re- taining an Apostolic ministry, but by embodying the great principles of the Gospel, in an Evangelical Liturgy. If the minister go astray and become heretical, he cannot easily carry the people with him. Nor can he continue to preach after he ceases to believe in the Divinity of Christ. He must quit the church at once when he quits the faith, since he cannot preach without using the Liturgy, and he cannot do that, after he ceases to believe that Christ is a Divine Being. In this manner are the people protected against the errors, into which their minister may fall. It has been shown in the sermon that a Liturgy has always obtained in the church, in connection with an Apostolic ministry ; that these wer» universal for fifteen hundred years, and that, at the present day, of the tivo hundred millions of Christians, one hundred and eighty retain the three orders of the ministry and a Liturgy. Heresies have appeared from time to time in the church. This was foretold by Christ and the Apos- 284 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ties. Christ promised to be with His Church, and " the gates of heL should not prevail against it/' This promise has been fulfilled : — they have not prevailed against it. It is a remarkable fact, tha* of the one hundred and eighty millions who retain the Apostolic ministry, of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, there is not, to my knowledge, a single congregation who deny the Divinity of Christ. There is another fact in this connection hardly less remarkable. The great work of the Reformation commenced about the same time in Eng- land and on the Continent. In England, the Church was content to cut off what was corrupt, to reform what had been abused, and to preserve what was believed to be Apostolic. The German reformers also cut off what was corrupt, and reformed what had been abused, but they went one step further : — they rejected Episcopacy, — because the Church of Rome had made a Pope of the Bishop of Rome, and had otherwise corrupted the three-fold ministry. Here then was a great experiment. Here were two Reformed Churches : the one holding to an Apostolic Ministry, the other rejecting it. In other respects, there was no essential difference between them. Now, after three hundred years, what is the result? There stands the English Church with her twenty thousand Clergymen, and her Missionaries in every land ; the very bulwark of Protestalnt Christendom, maintaining " the faith once delivered to the saints." What has become of her who, three hundred years ago, claimed to be a sister, but undertook to put asunder what Apostles had joined to- gether ? Where is the faith entrusted to her 1 She thought it wise to attempt to maintain the Apostolic faith without the Apostolic ministry — thus substituting a plan of her own for the plan of the Apostles ; and where is she now, and what does she teach ? At the beginning of the present century "a majority of the divines of the German Churches rejected all belief in the Divine Origin of Christianity." Says an American Traveller : — " The majority of the Professors in the Univer- sities disbelieve the Revelation of the Old Testament, and regard its authority with no more reverence than that of the Iliad or ^nead." ** The Miracles of the Old, and often those of the New Testament, are explained away in conversation and in their lecture rooms ; and the inspi- DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 285 ration of the Apostles, and sometimes of Christ, publicly denied" " On the subject of the New Testament, there is also the greatest diversity of opin- ion, though the majority of the Professors, in every department, unite in disbelieving it." The same writer adds : — "I believe I am within the bounds of truth in asserting, that there are not five Orthodox Professors and Clergymen in Germany, who esteem the Sabbath in any other light than as a Mosaic Institution." Of the practical effects of such teaching the reader can judge for himself. — See Richardson's Reasons — Stewart's Letters to Channing — Dwight's Travels in Germany — Rose's State of Protestantism in Germany — Robinson's Bib. Rep., Vol. 1. After the Refonnation, in England, another experiment was made. The Puritans came forth from the Church of England. They had the Apostolic faith as held by that church. They were at that time truly Or- thodox as to the articles of their belief. But they undertook to maintain that faith, without the Apostolic Ministry, and without the aid of a Liturgy^ They landed upon these shores and planted the Banner of the Cross in the new world, to be carried forth by an ai-my, without divinely commis- sioned officex'S, What has been the result ? In about two hundred years the great body of their churches denied " the Lord that bought them." The very Church at Plymouth, which they planted, depai'ted from the faith. There was a time, when there was but a solitary Congregational parish, in the city of Boston, that was Orthodox. The very University which Pilgrim hands planted, and Pilgrim piety endowed, became the hot-bed of heresy. And where is the Church of England 1 Just where she was three hundred years ago; firmly holding "the faith once deliv- ered to the saints." I know it is sometimes said, that the King's Chapel, Boston, was the first Episcopal Church which became Unitarian. I aver that no Episcopal Church in this country ever did become Unitarian. Tlie " King's Chapel " was once an Episcopal Church. When the Revo- lutionary war broke out, the Minister and many of his people, who were loyalists, left the country. It was used, for a while, by the " Old South" Congregation. The property of the former proprietors, who were loyal- ists, was confiscated. The pews fell into the hands of other people. After peace was declared, a Mr. Freeman • applied to Bishop White for 286 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ordination, at the same time avowing his Unitarian sentiments. Bisliop White could not ordain him, and would not, if he coukl — because he was a heretic. What did the people do ? They had a meeting of the congre- gation. They set apart and ordained two of their number as Deacons, — wlio, in their turn, laid their hands upon Mr. Freeman's head; and he then and there, and thereby, becomes their minister. " He, in his turn, takes the Prayer Book and riddles it of its vitals, and proceeds with his ministrations. Thus it will be seen, that the "King's Chapel" did not become a Unitarian place of worship, until it became a Congrega- tional parish. All there is Episcopal about it, are the walls, furniture, and the skeleton of a mutilated Prayer Book. The Church is the conservator of the " Truth " in another relation. On the oppositie side stands the Church of Rome, clothed with great pow- er, and covered with deep corruption. She boasts of her authority — and in a controversy with her, the various denominations invariably come off second best. They unwittingly attack her at a point where she is strong- est, and they are weakest. On the other hand, when she tells us that she has an Apostolic commission, from Christ, through His Apostles, we answer : " So have we." And we follow up this answer by saying, that we have every thing that she ever had, in the first three centuries ; and the difference between us lies, only in those unscriptural doctrines, and practices, which have been added since. What she holds as articles of faith that we do not, are heresies, and we can tell her the time and the place when and where she adopted them. Thus our great advantage in the controversy with Rome, must be manifest to all, who understand what that controversy is. Note I. — Some affirm, that while the Baptists had no organized church until the seventeenth century, yet individuals who held Baptist sentiments were scattered throughout Christendom in early ages, and were known as the Albigenses and Waldenses. The Waldenses were a sect, which ap- ])eared in the twelfth century and had a ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. DR. RANDALL'S LECTURE. 287 Note K. — By confirmation we mean the rite of laying on of hands upon the heads of those who have been baptized, and Avhich is represented by St. Paul as "a principle of the doctrine of Christ." — Heb. vi. 2. When Philip went down to Samaria and preached, many believed, and were baptized by him. As soon as the Apostles at Jerusalem heard of this event, Peter and John went to Samaria, and laid their' hands upon these baptized persons. — Acts, viii. 15-17. So also at Ephesus, St. Paul laid his hands on those who had been baptized. — Acts, xix. 6. In the Apostolic age the rite was usually denominated " the laying on of hands ; " it is now commonly termed "confirmation," inasmuch aa the person who receives this laying on of hands, thereby ratifies and '.on- firms his baptismal vows. It is a profession of his faith before the world. The propriety of such a ceremony must be apparent. That it is Apos- tolic, there is no dispute. Of its fitness and profit, there are multi- tudes of witnesses. As none but Apostles performed this rite, so its administration is restricted to their successors, the Bishops of the church Calvin himself acknowledged that it was practised by the Apostles. In his fourth book of Institutes he says : " It was an ancient custom, that the children of Christian parents, when they were grown up, should be presented to the Bishop to do that office, which was required of persons who were baptized at adult age." . . . . " Such an imposition of hands as this, which is used purely as a blessing, I very much approve of, and Avish it were now restored to its pure and primitive uses." The following testimony is an extract from the " report of a committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church." " It appears," say they, "that a rite called confirmation was administered by the imposition of the hand of the minister, or bishop, or elder, together with prayer, on baptized children at a certain age." And after quoting the authority of Calvin and others, the committee add : " This rite of confirmation, thus administered to baptized children when arrived to competent years, and previously instructed and prepared for it, with the express view of their admission to the Lord's Supper, shows clearly that the primitive church, in her purest days, exercised the authority of a mother over her baptized children," — Bishop Hohart's Tract on Confirmation. In the Episcopal 288 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Church the candidate for baptism, (if an adult,) for confirmation and the Lord's Supper, is examined by the minister, and by him admitted to these privileges, if, in his opinion, the candidate be a proper subject for them. The " keys " were committed to the Apostle, and not to the peo- ple. The commission from Christ authorizes and directs his minister to baptize, and no earthly power can interpose in this matter. A minister has no moral right to allow laymen to say whom he shall baptize and admit to the Lord's Supper, and whom he shall not. Sheep are not, commonly, shepherds. Note L. — Any person in this diocese may prefer a complaint against a clergyman to the Standing Committee of the diocese, who, after hav- ing made a preliminary examination, may, at their discretion, present such clergyman to the Bishop for trial, in which case they are required to make charges and specifications in writing, in the form of a presentment, which presentment is sent to the Bishop, who is required to serve a copy of the same on the accused, with a list of nine Pi-esbyters, from which the accused shall select five, and return the same to the Bishop. The court thus constituted meet at such time and place as the Bishop may appoint. The court declare their decision in writing, together with the sentence, if the accused be found guilty. The sentence is pronounced publicly by the Bishop, in some church, in the presence of three Presby- ters. If the sentence be deposition from the ministry, it is immediately communicated to the Bishops of the several dioceses. Note M. — John Calvin, who was the father of Presbyterianism, was not a Presbyterian from choice, but from what he regarded as a necessity. Here are his views of Episcopacy : " The Episcopate itself had its ap- pointments from God. The ofiice of a Bishop was instituted by the authority and defined by the Ordinance of God." ** Let them give us such an hierarchy, in which the Bishops may so bear rule that they refuse not to submit to Christ, and to depend upon Him as their only Head : let them be so united together in a brotherly concord, as that his truth shall be their onlv bond of union ; then, in- DR. Randall's lecture. 289 deed, if there shall be any who will not reverence them, and pay them the most exact obedience, there is no anathema, but I confess them worthy of it/' — See " Reasons," etc., by Richardson. John Calvin not only thus sanctioned Episcopacy, but desired to be consecrated a Bishop. Says Archbishop Abbott : " Perusing some papers of our predecessor, Matthew Parker CArchbishop), we find that John Calvin and others, of tiie Protestant churches of Germany, and elsewhere, would have had Episcopacy, "if permitted, but could not upon several accounts." It appears that Calvin sent letters, in King Edward VI. reign, inviting a conference with the clergy on this subject, which letters were inter- cepted by Gardiner and Bonner, two Romish Bishops, and they never reached their destination. Calvin received an answer purporting to be from the reformed divines, declining his overtures. In the sixth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign these letters were discovered, but Calvin was then dead. Philip Melancthon, a Presbyterian, one of the most distinguished of the Continental Reformers, thus speaks of Episcopacy : " I would to God it lay in me to restore the government of Bishops. For I see what manner of church we shall have, the Ecclesiastical polity being dis- solved. I do see that, hereafter, there will grow up a greater tyranny in the church than there ever was before." Note N. — Congregational Ordination. That laymen can make a minister of God, but putting their hands on his head, is a doctrine which may startle Congregationalists, who never were told that this is a principle of Congregationalism. So much of a, principle did the Puritans of New England make lay ordination, that they even required laymen to lay their hands in ordination upon the head of a regularly ordained minister of the Church of England, when he desired to enter their ministry — as in the case of Mr. Francis Higginson, who was ordained at Salem, July 20, 1629. Mr. H., who was a minister in the Church of England, acting in the capacity of a layman, " with three or four more of the gravest members of the church, laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, using prayers 25 290 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. therewith." Then Mr. Skelton, with the same " present and assisting" peers, performed the same kind office for Mr. Higginson. And thus says a witness of the scene : " I hope you, and the rest of God's people with you, will say that here was a right foundation laid, and that these two blessed servants of the Lord, came in at the door, and not at the window." — FeWs Annals of Salem, p. 28. For other instances of Lay Ordination, see Note 83, p. 490, Coit's Puritanism. *• All Congregational ordinations are virtually laical ; for, as the Jirst were so, all the rest miust bo." SIXTH LECTURE. REV. ORYILLE DEWEY, D.D., PA8T0R OF THE SOCIETY Af CHIRCH GREEN, S U JI ]M E K STREET. 291 VI. WHY I AM A UNITARIAN, Matthew xxii. 35 — 40. — Then one of them, -who was a lawyer ASKED him a question, TEMPTING HIM, AND SAYING, MASTER, WHICH IS THE GREAT COMMANDMENT OF THE LAW ? AnD JeSUS SAID UNTO HIM, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, AND WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND. ThIS IS THE FIRST AND GREAT COMMANDMENT. AnD THE SECOND IS LIKE UNTO IT ; ThOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. On THESE TWO COMMANDMENTS HANG ALL THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS. These were not only comprehensive and final words from the Master, upon the nature of religion, but for the time, nay and for all time, they are very significant words. They swept down all Jewish subtlety and ques- tioning, and a great deal beside. Of mint, annis, and cummin, how much; the resurrection- wife, whose she should be, of the seven that had her; tribute to Caesar, to be paid or no : and in later days, the hypostases, how related, how mingled, homoousian, or homoiou- sian ; human ability, whether natural or moral; decrees, election with or without foresight of good works; theologic fogs rising from Dort or Augsburg — all fly like unsubstantial mists over the solid earth ; here is 25=*^ 293 294 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the ground beneath — the solid ground of all truth and doctrine. No matter what the Mischna and Gemara say — no matter what Hillel or Shammai says — no matter what Luther or Calvin or Arminius, or Straus or Ronge says to disturb my mind, they cannot shake this foundation. Nay, Ronge ? I am disposed to re- call that instance — where is Ronge? He set up the love-principle — not faith, but love ; nay, that faith is love, was his principle ; the most notable thing, and the most notable reform it would have made, that has appeared in these latter days. And this is one reason I will add in passing, why I prefer my own system of religious thought to any other ; because, as it seems to me, it sets up more clearly — more free from all doctrinal entanglement than any other system, this principle of love — love to God and love to man, as the ground and basis, the sum and substance of all religion. This, however, is but on the threshold of the question proposed in this series of discourses ; in which each one of five or six denominations — or some person an- swering for it — undertakes to speak of itself; to speak of its faith, order and discipline ; and to say why it prefers its own to any other. Now that a sys- tem is true^ or appears to be true, is the main and sufficient reason, with any thoughtful person, why he prefers it. But I understand that the answer here, is expected to turn upon practical issues. What is there DR. devvey:'s lecture. 295 in the devout and humane feelings that a man cherishes, which makes his system of faith and church order at- tractive to him ? Religion is summed up by the Mas- ter in these two precepts : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart;" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Why, and wherein, to the love of God and man, is this or that system interest- ing ? It is an important question ; for there is a close con- nection between theology and religion. This is often denied, I know ; but I cannot agree with the denial. Say^ the Poet — " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; * His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right." There is a sense indeed, in which this is true ; though not the sense, I think, in which the poet meant it. That is to say — he whose life — i. e., whose inward and outward life is right, believes all that is essential. It is in this view, that I have just pointed to the great and palpable foundations of all religion. But still, a man's ideas of God, of Christ, of the Gospel, of hu- man nature, and of the principles of human culture and welfare, have a great deal to do with his piety, his humanity, his essential happiness. I only lay down this as a general observation, at present ; and expect it to appear more fully, as we go on. But before I proceed to the main points which I 296 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. propose to consider, I will say a word or two of cer- tain matters of form and circumstance, which have been very naturally brought into this discussion. One is that of Church Order ; whether it shall seem preferable that the church be governed or presided over by Bishops, by Presbyters, by Assemblies, Synods, Conferences, or not. Now, while I do not think that any form or mode of hierarchy is laid down in the New Testament, I prefer the Congregational order. And I prefer it, for the same general reason that leads me to \ refer the Republican system in politics, viz., that it gives me freedom. In religion, more than in politics, I seek for freedom. The State may, with more reason, demand conformity. It cannot exist without a certain amount of conformity. And the re- quisition presses mostly, too, upon the outward life. I might live, all my life, under a despotism, and never, perhaps, be obliged to say, that I believed what I did not believe ; or to lose my life, or property, or reputa- tion, if I did not. But religion is a thought, a feeling, a communion with the Infinite, a stretching onward to immortality; and nothing is so painful to it as any fetter or chain. To have pontiff, or prelate, or presby- tery, or creed, stand before me and say — " thus far ; no farther, at your peril!" — I could bear any thing better than that. And I had rather take the worst possible church organization with freedom, than the best possible — if such a thing could be — without it. DR. dewky's lecture. 297 " Ah ! " it may be said, " freedom is a fine thing to talk about; but who has it? Who is there that thinks what he will ? or that can diverge very widely from those around him, without suffering for it ? " Grant that nobody has it perfectly. Grant that opinion presses upon the world like the atmosphere ; and no- body can get out of it. That is no reason w^hy I should not have all the freedom that I can. And I must have it ; my mind cannot advance with- out it. It is the very condition of progress ; and yet more, it is the inborn right of my intellect, to think freely. To put me in a theological inclosure, with a fence, five bars or thirty-nine bars high, and then to say, " you must not pass this fence, and you must not pull out one of those bars ! " — I would as soon consent that thirty-nine propositions, or a whole catechism of articles in science should be laid before me, to bound or to shape my inquiries. Indeed it would be more intolerable in theology than in physics. No, I must have freedom. In religion, above all, I must have freedom. Another topic which has been brought into this dis- cussion, is success. It is said, that Unitarianism does not spread like other systems. Very imposing statis- tics can be presented, for instance, of the progress of Methodism. I am glad there can be. I rejoice at the work which Methodism has done. I like its practical and afiectionate spirit. I have attended a Methodist 298 PTTTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Church myself, for two years, in my country home, and there had the happiness to know its pastor, and to call my friend, one of the most thoughtful, reverent, and true men that I have ever known in any church.* Let Methodism prosper . then ; let every good work prosper. And yet there are one or two observations which I desire to submit, on this subject of success. In the first place, the views substantially which we embrace do prevail extensively under other names than our own. In the large and increasing Bodies of the Universalists and Christians, the doctrine of the Trinity is distinctly rejected ; and so, generally speaking, are its kindred or associated doctrines. And our three denominations to- gether may not be less in numbers than the Methodist body itself. Ijx the next place, let me observe, there is a difference between the spread of a sect^ and the spread * The Rev. Thomas Randolph Mercein. I hope I may be pardoned this affectionate allusion to the memory of Mercein, in a series of dis- courses designed to bring out the points of union and sympathy between different classes of Christians. I never knew a young man more fitted by natural endowments and spiritual gifts, for the holy office he took upon him. He began to preach, very young — at 19, and died at 31 . His remains rest in the cemetery at Sheffield, and ought to have a monument. Beautiful in person, simple in manners, strong in purpose, and indefatiga- ble in labor, in him were combined manliness, earnestness and delicacy, with great strength and beauty of intellect. His work on "Natural Goodness " shows what he was. I do not agree with his conclusion ; but to the originality, insight, eloquence, and generosity of his writing, no one can refuse his testimony. DR. dewey's lecture. 299 of ideas. In this latter sphere of success we clahn that we have done some work, and that we have not labored in vain. The body of Christians distinctively known as Unitarians, is a small body ; and if there is no suc- cess but what depends on worldly combination, organ- ization or policy, never had any men less chance of it than we. Bound by no convention but mutual respect and good will, by no creed but the Gospel ; thinking and saying, each one what he will ; questioning our- selves and our movement, more sharply than if it had taken place on the other side of the world ; in our churches perfectly independent; in our conventions more than independent — even litigiously bent on find- ing all the fault we can with ourselves, spying out defects and criticising tendencies recklessly, as those only can who believe in immortal truth — certainly, we are the least politic of all people. The by-standers looking on, say, " see this little Unitarian body dissolv- ing and all going to pieces before our eyes ; why, they don't believe in themselves ; they believe in nothing but truth." Nevertheless, here we stand, " as chastened, and not killed ; as dying, and behold, we live ; as un- known, and yet well known;" here we stand, this " forlorn hope," if it shall please any to have it seem so to them ; I say rather — for if they give me their thought, I must man myself up, though against all modesty, to give them mine — / say rather, this van- guard in the great army of Christian progress ; and if 300 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. tViis vanguard must sink, either merged in the arrny that it has led on, or dying at its post, I shall not be sorry for the humble part I have taken in the conflict. For ideas never die ! The breath goes out of a man's body, and it is dead ; synods and councils of mighty men are dissolved and scattered ; churches and hierar- chies decline and crumble to pieces ; but ideas never die! And if I worshipped success, which. I do not — if I were governed by mere worldly policy, I believe that there is a wide and onward sv^eep of thought in the very direction in which I am g( ing — of thought in lit- erature, in science, in philosophy, in the deepest medita- tions of the most enlightened men in all Protestant countries ; and I had rather cast myself upon the tide, restless, fluctuating, even dangerous, that will bear me to some far, bright haven, than to be anchored or stranded, in temporary securi y, upon the shore. But it is time that I should pass from the scaflbld- ing and the outworks of religion, about which I am less concerned, to the temple itself. I am asked what there is in the views which I, as a Unitarian, entertain of religion, which makes them interesting to my devo- tional and humane sentiments ; or, if you please, which makes them seem to me favorable and fostei- ing to piety and virtue, to the love of God and man. First, I am to speak — with awe let me say it — I am to speak of God. I am forced, by the question, upon this awful theme ; and yet I cannot bear to DR. dewey's lecture. 301 speak of it in any way of debate. Rather in terms like those of Milton's invocation would I speak, and say, " Hail ! holy Light ! oifspring of heaven first born, Or of the eternal, co-eternal beam ; May I express Thee unblamed ; since God is light, And never but in unapproached light, Dwelt from eternity ; dwelt then in Thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate." What thoughts are ours, when that great, that greatest possible Idea enters our minds! Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain it ; how much less an earthly temple! Upward, and outward, and onward — and onward, our minds rise, and range abroad, and find no end. This assembly is naught, this world is naught ; the plane of the starry spheres is passed over as but a paved court ; a thousand suns grow dim and are left far behind ; infinitude, eternity, omnipotence, are in our thought; and they are all concentred in one Being. That Being, so transcend- ing all comprehension, all imagining — that Being who has given existence to every leaf and every leafy fibre in the spreading forests that engirdle the world, and to every insect that lights upon them, and to every bird that sings among the branches, and to every beast and creeping thing beneath — that Being, who has made mighty suns and stars more numerous than the forest leaves, and has filled them all with light and life, and who knows at this instant the mii- 26 302 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. lion-fold events and actions and minds of million-fold worlds — what soul does not sink into awe and won- der and delight at the thought of such a Being? That mine eyes are opened to beautiful visions, and mine ears to lovely sounds ; that I see the heavens and the earth, and the human face divine — speak not of it now ; I have heard of something greater^ and mine ear hath comprehended a little thereof; I have heard ©f One, in whom all life, light, beauty, blessing, goodness and loveliness are summed up in infinite fulness, and from whom they all flow forth in bound- less diversity, and blessing, and beatitude ! Now, it is the charm of my contemplation of this Infinite Being, that it runs free, and far and wide from all theological direction. I mean theological in the scholastic sense ; for Theology, in its true definition, is the divinest of all sciences. I am left to think of God, without attempting to define the mode of his ex- istence ; no scholastic Trinity perplexes my thoughts ; no scheme of salvation, in which different persons take a part; no question, which I shall worship — whether I shall worship one rather than another, or how I shall worship all. God, in the infinite sub- limity and loveliness of his nature, I am left to think upon. But I know that he is my Father; I sink down into that. Amidst all my strugglings to com- prehend Him, faint, exhausted, overwhelmed, T sink into that. I become a child, and say, " my Father." DR. DEWEY'S LECTURE. 303 Philosopher, logician, theologian, I am not, in this contemplation, but a child, — and I sometimes think this simple reliance as precious to a speculative as it was to a superstitious age, — but a child, I say, know- ing that the infinite love embosoms me, knowing that it cares^or me and pities me, and will save me from every ill, if I confide -in it. But when I speak the word. Father, all depends upon the meaning which I attach to it. To say that a being, any being, is good^ does not suffice for a con- ception of his character; we ask what he does, or what actions are ascribed to him. What is the true idea of a good father? The meaning of the phrase, applied to God, depends on analogy ; and in the con- struction of it, w^e may lean too far doubtless, either to lenity or severity. Certainly a good father requires obedience, and punishes for disobedience. So, we believe, does the Infinite Father. But suppose that an earthly parent could so ordain, as to bring his children into the world, cripples.^ or suppose they chance to be born such, and then that he exacts full service from them, and inflicts cruel stripes upon them every day for failure : would the common sense of the world hesitate what character to ascribe to that proceeding ; or would any vocabulary of human speech be strong enough to set forth the common indignation against it ? You could not live^ in a vil- lage where such a thing was done. Such a thing 304 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. could not live in the world — full as it is, of tolerated horrors. But how feebly does such an instance set forth the case in question! Almighty God has brought into the world, this race of human beings. He has placed, or laid, or left them — such is the popular i±ieory — under a condition, either of impotence or natural depravity, which makes their perdition certain and inevitable without his interference. For millions unnumbered, he does not^ he never will interfere. And every day, by thousands, they drop — from the gi'een and flowery plain of the world, where they had idled or toiled away their little hour's existence, — they drop into everlasting burnings, or into everlasting agonies. Nay, millions of heathens, who never heard of the Gospel, — Asiatic, Egyptian, African crowds and crowding generations, from the begining of time, as they dropped from this bright world, have been heaped up, age after age, in awful aggregation, thous- ands of millions in each century, upon this burning altar of endless pain ! We speak of this, in sober and solemn words; yet is it any thing but one of the horrors of" a poetic im- agination ? Hildebrand, before he was Pope, Gregory VII., was a preacher. Preaching one day in Arezzo, he drew a picture of hell — he or some one else had had such vision — in which he saw something like a pole or mast rising out of the fiery flood, and on it DR. DEWEY'S LECTURE. 305 a human form which he recognized, as that of a Ger- man baron lately deceased ; and what surprised him, a man of excellent character. On enquiring the rea- son of this, he was told that his ancestor eight gen- erations before, had despoiled a convent or abbey of its lands ; and that for this offence, he and his eight successo^ nine in all, were doomed thus to sink into the fiery abyss. It has been thought that Dante drew from this, his idea of the nine circles in hell. It was, indeed, but a poetic fiction. Can the popular creed of to day be any other? But this is far off.* Bring it nigh then. You are a father. An infant being is laid in your arms. It was born in the morning, and died at evening. For that day's life, do you believe — its unhappy fate linked to Adam, and settled by the /at of election — that it must meet the eternal doom ? You will say "no," perhaps; "responsibility does not begin so soon." When, then, does it begin ? Is it at two years old, or five, or ten ? Fix any time, or let the time be when it will. The day has come ; and now and henceforth, it must answer to the everlasting fu- ture : nay, and eternity may depend on the probation of an hour. For in an hour it may die ; or in a week, or a month, it may die. This is no imagina- tion ; alas ! it is reality. And your lovely child that is taken from you — you cannot say, perhaps, that 26* 306 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. it was a Christian — a regenerate soul. Passions were breaking out from time to time, which had been nursed in infancy, and which it had not learned to controL It was lovely perhaps, and full of promise ; but you could not say, that in it yet appeared, the character, conversion or hope of a Christian. But it is gone ; the Infinite Father has takeMI it ; and what has he done to it? Cast that frail and tender life, for its week's or month's probation, into outer darkness, where is weeping and wailing and gnash- ing of teeth forever? For that week's or month's experience — ignorant, unconscioyns, unknowing of the unutterable peril — cast that poor child, torn trembling from its mother's arms, upon a doom, upon a misery that is to grow and increase forever and ever, — upon a misery that shall swell to a greater amount in eter- nity, than all the accumulated miseries of this world in time ? There is not a parent's heart in this assem- bly, that would not break at the thought, if it were brought home to it. And may not that interpret something of Ihe Infinite Parent's pity for his chil(t- ren ? And I say if you cannot believe that a month's probation, neither can you believe that this weak, frail, ignorant, troubled, human life^ must draw after it such an irreversible doom. At any rate, this dreadful doc- trine of everlasting punishment for all unregenerate souls, falls when tried upon that issue. If you can- DR. DEWEY^S LECTURE. 307 not believe that a month's probation carries with it such an awful doom — if you give up that^ you give up the doctrine entirely. Let us now turn to the other subject which I pro- posed mainly to consider — humanity — man. There is one thing, and only one, which, for every human being, is true welfare, power, peace, blessing, beatitude. It is rectitude, it is sanctity, it is love — love of God and man. What relation has human nature to this — the great end of being? It is, in the com- mon account, a relation of inefficiency, of inaptitude, of total aversion, of total estrangement, of blank dis- couragement to all rational hope, of barren soil to all natural culture. What is the practical consequence? A general and fatal inactivity, if not indifference, with regard to the highest thing. There it is — it is called religion — there it is, high up and out of reach ; man cannot attain to it ; some time, perhaps, it will be brought down to him by a power divine ; but for the present, there is a great gulf fixed between him and it. Between humanity and religion, in short, there is no kindly relation, no uniting bond, no natural sympathy. Now, how did Jesus look upon this human world ? We can judge best of what any one thinks of others by his manner of treating them, by the motives and appeals he addresses to them. Now there is a distinc- tion observable in our Savior's manner of speaking to men, which I do not remember to have seen noticed. 308 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. To certain classes of persons he spoke with great se- verity — to the hypocritical Pharisee, to the proud pre- tender to superior virtue, to unrighteous spiritual op- pressors of the people. But to men generally, and even to the poor and degraded, he spoke in a differ- ent tone — with tenderness, with sympathy. He ad- dressed them, as if there was something right in them — something at least that would respond to the touches of right sentiment. He said, "love God; love your brethren : God is your father." He ad- dressed to them the loftiest and most heroic motives. He did not speak to them as mean and base creatures, but as to those who had better thoughts, and were capable of better things. In no assembly of heroes and martyrs could ever be heard nobler appeals than these, " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you." And this was not addressed to the disciples alone ; for although the disciples gathered around him as he sat on the mountain-side, others came also ; and it is said at the close, that the people were astonished — or as it would be better rendered — the multitude were struck with admiration at his doctrine. On another occasion, after he had poured out re- proaches upon those who sat in Moses' seat, saying, " Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," he turns with infinite tenderness to his people, and says, "O Jerusalem I Jerusalem I how often would I 309 have gathered thy childi'en together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." Nothing can be more touching, nor, in this view, more significant, than his treatment of the young man, who came to him, kneeling and saying. Master, what good thing shall I do ? He was not a disciple of Christ ; he was not regenerate, in our modern sense ; he was like many others ; he was a type of human kind, with its good ideals, and the will too weak to carry them out. Jesus says to him, " thou knowest the commandments." " O yes, I know them," is the reply ; " I have kept them from my youth." The Mas- ter does not reproach him — does not deny his claim. Well nurtured, trained in religion, outwardly blame- less, free from base vices, aspiring to something higher, Jesus looked upon him, and his heart was touched ; "he looked upon him and loved him." And yet he said, with great tenderness, I do not doubt, he said — " One thing thou lackest ; if thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor ; and come, follow me." O folding arm of the heavenly shepherd ! why do those thou lovest and longest for, wander from thee ? Why, upon the bare mountains, and in miry ways do they wander ? Why do our children, the young of the flock, stray away into the world, and forget the lowly roof that sheltered them, and the lowly prayer beneath it ? When thou, good shepherd, art ready to take them to thy heart ; when thou lookest on them 310 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. and lovest them, and wouldst hold them by the hand, and lead them in the way, — why do they wander ? Because — for one reason — they are told they do not belong to the flock. Because they are told that they have no part nor lot in the great inheritance of God's children. Because they are brought up to think religion as far from them as heaven is from earth. If this is true, we must submit to it, and sink down beneath the awful dispensation — our hands inactive, our heads bowed in the dust — and can only say, " come, O wind from heaven, and blow upon us and breathe life into us." If it is not true, if religion is made for man and man for religion, if there is a dear affinity between the human soul and things holy, how- ever alas! marred and weakened, then in heaven's name and in the name of humanity, let us arouse our- selves to the one and only work that demands our ut- most care^ let us study and strive to be true and pure, just as we strive and study to be wise and learned ; " let us labor," as one has said, " as if we could do every thing, and pray as if we could do nothing'; " and let us train up our children in this way in which they should go, believing that when they are old, they will not depart from it. The difference in the views of human nature here stated, is most vital to its treatment, culture and hope, and, as a lover of my kind, I cannot hesitate which to adopt. I love my theology because it is a loving the- DR. DEWEY'S LECTURE. 31 ology ; because it allows me to be a loving and sym- pathising man, and does not require me forever to fight and brow-beat this great and sacred humanity — God's highest work on earth. I am not preacher, when 1 preach. I sit in the pews. I would rather speak from that level. And when sitting there in imagination, I lift my eyes to him that stands above, I am sometimes tempted to say, " O good sir, take some human thought of us ; we are weak and erring enough, God knows ; we are full of faults, and they are sad to think of; we are weary and want rest; we are struggling, and would find peace within — God's peace and bles- sing; help us then, and do not be hard with us ; if you are perfect as he was who spake to the young man in the Gospel, then speak to us with his love and tenderness and respect ; and if you are not, but are like one of us, then speak to us with the sympathy of a brother-heart." What I am saying — with some liberty of manner — is, that I would take my place within the circle and bosom of humanity ; and that is where I do not think that the scholastic theology does take its place. I know that man is capable of being very bad. I think of that, it may be, as much as another. But I do not say, it is just what we might expect of him. I do not eagerly and gratifiedly adduce it as an argu- ment for his utter depravity. No, with indignation 1 look upon it — with sorrow and wonder. I say, how 312 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES- can such a being as man is, be so cruel, hard, intoler- ant — a tyrant, a persecutor, a brute, a demon. And yet who, after all, is altogether a brute or a demon ? It is a rule of dramatic writing, whose business it is to draw the human character to the very life , that no human being is ever truly represented, without a mixture of good 3,nd evil in him. If this is true, why should it not be equally a truth for theology ? No ; man is not an angel, nor is he a demon. Aw- ful powers are struggling within him — conscience on the one hand, and passion on the other — and never but in the ascendency of conscience over passion, can he find peace — never! Even old Boethius, pagan as he was, might teach us better than many, under Chris- tian nurture, seem to know, though one cannot be- lieve but that he must have read the Christian books. When he comes, in his work, on '' Consolation," to the last dread question which touches and trou- bles the problem of human life, "why are the bad so often fortunate and happy, and the good, unfor- tunate and miserable ? why the . bad crowned, and the good martyred ? why is vice triumphant, and virtue crushed in the dnst beneath it?" bravely he answejrs, " no, it is not so ; true power belongs to the good, real weakness to the bad; vice is never unchas- tised, and virtue never without recompense ; good men are always essentially happy, and bad men are 'Iways really miserable." That is true; and all that is necessary is, more sharply to define it, and to say — the effect of evil, just so far as it prevails in any mind, is to make it unhappy, and the effect of good, in the same proportion, is to make the mind happy. And what a nature is it, of which that is true ? What a struggle must there be in the deeps of such a nature to be looked at, with infinite concern and sympathy ? Nay, what a nature is that which speaks out, I am sure, in many here, and now, and says — there *is some- thing better than to be happy, there is something worse than to be unhappy. What a divine law is that^ to be graven deep upon our being ! And what vindication is it, of the nobler idea of humanity, when a man stands up erect and free from every stooping baseness and vileness, and says, " I feel now that I am a man I " Against the whole tide of any theology, or prejudice, or obloquy that beats, with undistinguish- ing hostility upon all that is human, I do not fear to take up that word, and to say to every man, that would throw off the "trammels of any vice, or vanity, or worldliness, of any godless impiety or profane and debauching vileness — to say to him, " rise up, and be a man I " But after all there may be some here who still have questions in their minds ; who ask, perhaps, how all this applies to the great subject of what we call man's salvation ; how it is that man is to become man : how 27 314: PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. it is that man is to become regenerate and pure; and what is the help that the Christ offers him to this end. In the first place then, I must say that my idea of religion is very inadequately, very poorly set forth by the word " salvation." In its present and popular use it does not mean precisely what it did in the first age. When the Gospel was preached to Pagans and Jews, to men lying under the bondage of religious ceremonial or superstitious fear, it was deliverance, it was " salva- tion " that was preached. And still, doubtless, there is a sense in which the same word may be justly used. But for us now, as we do, constantly to represent the entire work of spiritual regeneration and growth, as a salvation, as an escape from sin and wrath, is, as I view it, to narrow the whole subject. Is it not more ? Is it not to put a selfish element into the innermost life of sanctity and virtue ? He who flies, does it from fear ; and I know no passion that I less desire to be mioved by than the passion of fear. It must have its place ; but to give it the first place, to put it foremost in the battle for virtue and purity, is to deny to the noblest endeavor on earth its proper grandeur and beauty. We have indeed to fight spiritual foes ; but what would be thought of it, if it were to be said to combatants for their country — not *' strike for your altars and your fires;" but " strike doughtily at your foes, for if you do not kill them, they will kill you ; " or worse, to say, " strike not at all, but flee for youj DR. DEWEY'S LECTURE. 315 lives to some place of safety.''^ Is safety all — is it chiefly^ what we are to seek in religion ? I know that for man, weak, sick at heart, wandering and in peril, salvation is needful ; it is the fit word for his case in certain respects ; but it does not cover the whole ground as it is commonly and technically made to do. I may be reminded too, that Jesus is called our Saviour in the New Testament — that Jesus means Sa- viour ; but 1 must still desire you to observe that that name does not usurp the whole idea of him in the Gospel. Rather does it hold that place in the record which fear should hold in our religion. The phrase " the Saviour," or " our Saviour," is used, I think, but fifteen times in the New Testament; while several hundred times Jesus is called the Christ. Bat this leads me, in the next place, to a further ob- servation; and that is upon the place which Jesua Christ actually holds in our regeneration, in our spirit- ual life. On this subject, I must be permitted to ex- press my conviction, that there has been a morbid exaggeration, almost from the beginning We have departed, I believe, from the original simplicity of the Gospel. The superstition of the dark ages ; the desire, always and naturally felt, to exalt the mercy of God in his greatest, " his unspeakable gift" to the world ; and the vying of Christian sects to honor their Common Head, have led to a manner of speaking of Christ which I believe he himself would have forbidden — - 316 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. which, virtually, I think. He has forbidden. " Why callest thou me good?" he says, " there is none good but one, that is God." That absolute supremacy of the one Infinite Being, — always he held it clear and high in his teachings. " I can of mine own self do nothing ; I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." " I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world ; again I leave the world, and go to the Father." And when about to depart, he says, " go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and unto my God and your God." It is not that there is among Christians too much of a reverent and affection- ate veneration for Christ — no, nor the hundredth part enough ; but it is a certain theological mysticism and exaggeration of which I complain. When it is said or implied that the love of Jesus is the highest type of religious experience ; when, to gather all our thoughts and hopes and reliances about him, is represented as the best guaranty for the true experience, I am con- strained by my allegiance to the Highest — nay, by my allegiance to the Master himself, to say, no ; God IS ALL IN ALL, to 1716. I siuk iuto the bosom of the Infinite Goodness ; that is the Infinite to ine ; and Jesus is the blessed Minister and Mediator who has "brought me nigh" to it. We have departed, I must venture to say and repeat, from the simplicity of the Gospel and its first teachers. The dying man in these 317 days is thought to give the most hopeful sign when he says, " Nothing but Christ ; nothing but Christ ; I have done nothing ; I am nothing ; all my reliance is upon Mm;'''' but what said Paul, when he was ready to be offered ? "I have fought a good fight ; I have finished my com-se ; I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous Judge will give me in that day." But what then, has Christ done for us ? What is he to us ? • And what do we mean when we pray in his name ? Jesus Chi'ist is our Master, oiir spiritual Lord, our Saviour ; the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person ; Immanuel — God with us. He has spoken to us as man never spake ; he has lived as neyerrnan lived; he died as never man died. Noth- ing so perfect was ever in the world before, or beside. All the Christian ages, all Christian hearts, attest that never else has there been such a mission of power and light and life to the world as this " glo- rious Gospel of th-e blessed God." And wherein lay its power ? In unveiling to us the love and loveliness of the Divine Nature ; in teaching us and making us feel that God is our Father : in assuring us by every word and by every suffering of the holy, the anointed One, of God's mercy, of his pity, of his willingness to forgive. And when we pray in 27* 318 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the name of Christ, we pray in the name, i. e., in the acknowledgement of that mercy, which he has taught and brought to us — in reliance upon it. When we end our prayers by saying, " through Jesus Christ," it is, not as if there was no other manifestation of the infinite mercy, but in confession and attestation of this — of Christ's teaching and living and dying as the chiefest sign and seal of God's mercy. Jesus spoke, appealed, addressed himself, to men. To what in them did he- speak ? To the sense of right, of truth, of religion; else he could not have spoken to them at all. There is a religion in human- ity ; there was^ before Christ came. And if we say, or imply in what we say, that there is no religion in the world, but what comes through him, we say what is not true — what the very conditions implied in one man's speaking to another, show not to be true — what the Apostle declares not to be true, when he speaks of those who " by nature do the things con- tained in the Law." No, Jesus spoke to the awful conscience in man ; to the recognition of God, every where prevailing ; to the everlasting sense of duty. Such winning, such tender, pitying, sympathizing — I will even say, such respectful speech, man had never heard before. Sunk in ignorance, toil and contempt, the mass of men lay ; and no man cared for^ then- souls. By the loveliness of his life, by the sweetness of his entieaty, by the patience of his endurance, b; DR. Dewey's lecture. 319 the tenderness of his accents, he would raise them up. From- all their weary wanderings in sin and sorrow, he called them back and said, " come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke which is easy, and my burthen which is light; and ye shall find rest to your souls." •And now, what especially did he say ? What did he require ? Repentance, faith — faith in God'» mercy — faith in himself, as the -messenger and me- diator through whom it came — anew heart and a new life. All this is what we now mean by conver- sion, by regeneration. And what is regeneration? Man is born once physically ; he must be born again spiritually. This spiritual life should begin with his first moral consciousness, and should go on and be developed more and more through his whole earthly course. It should not be put off till twenty, thirty, or forty years of age, then to form a crisis in life. If it is put off — as, alas! it too commonly is — then, by all the sacred interests of our being, let there be a crisis ! But how monstrous is it to say and settle it with ourselves, that our children are to' be left to go on for years in sin, in estrangement from religion and from God, and then, perchance, to be brought Into the fold. No ; " train up a child in the way in which he should go." Let parents win him by the loveliness of their example, by the tenderness of their prayers, by the habit of revering and speaking of all things 320 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. V sacred and good, by the very atmosphere of truth, gentleness, and piety, in which they live. It will do more than a thousand catechisms. Th^ catechisms may be very well, and Sunday Schools may be very well, to teach the facts of religion ; but beware, men and brethren ! beware, fathers and mothers ! how you put off upon them^ your holy charge — how you trust •to catechisms or Sunday Schools, to make your chil- dren devout, loving, true and pure. Nothing but the holy altar and sacred hearth-stone of domestic piety and love will ever rightly do that. Jesus "took little children in his arms, and blessed them, and said, of such is the kingdom of heaven." Would that we understood what that meant! • But I have said enough, perhaps ; that is, I have detained you long enough; if I were to add another word, it would be to say, that no religion can work powerfully and effectually in us, that does not work rationally, and, I will say, naturally. This old Mani- ^chsean dread among us of the word, nature^ is a re- markable thing. Nature is God's order and law, and to rely upon it is a law of our minds. Let there be any deviation from the ordinary course of nature — let the step of the earthquake jar our dwelling, or the stroke of insanity hang over us, and we are filled with horror. But let nature come into our religion, and it is held to be the fatal sign and signal of ruin to the whole system. DR. Dewey's lecture. 321 I believe in the supernatural. I believe in the mira- cles of Christ. But when they have attested him to be " a teacher come from God;" when he has spoken to us, and taught us the way, the truth and the life, then must the grace divine work in us according to the laws of our spiritual constitution, *or it will never effectually work at all. The religion that is artificial, factitious, made up, unnatural, is not religion ; it is superstition, sanctimony,. ceremony — no more. Out- wardly and inwardly must religion work so, to work well. Prayer, and preaching, and singing of hymns, and baptism, and confirmation, and communion, must be shown and seen to have a natural fitness, in order to have a healthy influence. A communion that is all constraint and demureness is not good ; only is it so when it is a natural, free, fresh, earnest participa- tion. But most of all, inwardly, and in the daily life of religion, there must be nature and freedom. I do not desire to see a Christian man who always carries the same face i— least of all a solemn one. The gay and the joyous have their place in the right life as truly as the serious and resolved. Always to say what I must say — always to do what I must do, be- cause I am a professor^ or preacher^ — I would not live such a life for Ophir or India. No, I live in God's world, and am made free and welcome in the house of my Father. No : not form, but substance ; not ceremony, but reality ; not bondage, but freedom ; 322 , PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. not demureness, but freshness and vitality ; not re- pression, but expansion ; not to make myself less, but more and more ; not to crush myself down in abjectness, but to open my arms wider and wider to the infinite Good — such must be the going forth, in me, of the everlasting life. SEVENTH LECTURE. BY REY. THOMAS STARR KING, PASTOR OF THE HOLLI3 STREET CHURCH. 323 VII. SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. ** now we have received not the spirit of the world, bfjt the spirit which is of god; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of god." — 1 cor. ii. 12. " The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that wb ARE THE children OF GOD; AND IF CHILDREN, THEN HEIRS; HEIRS OF GOD, AND JOINT HEIRS WITH CHRIST." — RomanS, VIII. 16, 17. " The FRUIT OF the spirit is IN ALL GOODNESS, AND RIGHTEOUS- NESS, AND TRUTH." — Ephesians, V, 9. The clergymen who have spoken in the course of lectures that is to be closed to-night, have had each a definite scheme or outline of religious thought to sup- port and commend. I am asked to speak not in exposition or defence of any theological articles or confession, but, so far as . I am able, of Spiritual Christianity, which is independent of institutions and systems, which is the substance and soul in all creeds and organizations, which declares itself not through councils and catechisms, but through worship and life, and by which, as a common vitality through di- verse fractions, the church, out of many members, is made one body. 28 S25 / 326 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Is th-ere any such common penetrative and vivifying Christianity as this ? The question is put to us with peculiar emphasis, and should awaken peculiar inter- est at the close of a series of discourses, in which men of widely different theologies, and all represent- ing modern parties and organizations, too, have been heard. The names, Methodist, Universalist, Episco- palian, Baptist, Unitarian, Calvinist, Congregation- alist, have not the savor of antiquity. They stand for organizations and creeds that are of recent date. Not one of them suggests a scheme of religious thought that is coincident with the belief of the church in the first half of the second century. My own conviction is that not one of them clearly inter- prets and reproduces the theology of St. Paul. The sects which those names represent have all produced men, within this century, as consecrated as any that shine in the annals of saintliness and service, — men equally devoted, out of love to God and man, to the peculiarities of their belief. Yet their creeds are hos- tile and contradictory, their churches have sometimes been at war, and they are all summarily condemned in dogma and polity as heretic and alien, equally blind, impotent and graceless, by the oldest branch of historic Christendom. Is there any theory of Christianity that, in spite of doctrinal and ritual diversities, will bring all these parties within the pale of substantial truth, and that MR. king's lecture. 327 will justify them against the anathema of the oldest and most powerful of the churches ? Is there any theory, — not of shallow compromise, emptying Chris- tianity of its deepest significance for the sake of superficial and sterile toleration, — but deep as well as generous, penetrating to the very vitals of the Gospel, — that will accept all these parties, young as they are, discordant as their intellectual confessions seem, and dispose them into a large historic choir of the Spirit ? K Christianity is involved with any precise scheme of dogmas that must be symmetrically proportioned as the condition of its redeeming power, then not more than one sect out of the scores that have attempted to mould Infinite truth can be considered its organ. If it flows only in the channels of institu- tions, and cannot leap out of the conductors of sacra- ments and clergy, then no liberal and comprehensive conception of church history can be tolerated ; and we must hasten for salvation within the walls which the spirit refuses to overpass. Or, still further, if the mental acceptance of one or two prominent doctrines, such as the Trinity, or the sacrificial death of Jesus as a safisfaction to God or to his law, is indispensable, — if the redeeming energy of the spirit concentrates and restricts itself within the range of belief in these doctrines, — then all Unitarian excellence and experi- ence must be stricken from the trophies and protection 328 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. of Christianity, as false blossoms in the vineyard, void of the beauty and the fragrance of grace. What, then, is to be our starting point, our position of survey over Christendom ? Our conception of spiritual Christianity, of its credentials and fruits to- day, and of the partnership in it of unconsonant be- lievers, must be characterised and measure! by our estimate of what ChMstianity was in its origin, what its vital centre was in the Apostolic age, and by what agencies it was to be sustained in society. To the question of what Christianity was in its origin, only the highest answer, it seems to me, is the adequate answer. It was the communication of life to the race from the heavens. It was not a philoso- phy, a reaching up of the human intellect through Jesus, James, and Paul to the attainment of a little higher truth and a little more truth than had been mastered before ; but an unsealing of the treasury of the skies, an overflow into time of the Infinite light and grace to illumine and regenerate the world. We have had in recent years rationalistic explana- tions, and naturalistic theories of the substance and origin of Christianity. Many of them have been in- vested with great learning and urged with remarkable ability. They have been provoked, no doubt, by the rigid and superstitious estimates of records and inspi- ration in the Protestant church ; and there can be lit- MR. king's lecture. 329 tie question that they will lead to a more comprehen- sive conception of the forces and the historic channels of Christianity than the mind of the Church has ever held. But as an explanation of the Christian religion, and of its relations past, present, and prospective, to civilization and the spiritual life of man, rationalism is unsatisfactory and shallow. Christianity was the communication of divine power to humanity by the unfolding from God of more of the eternal love and truth, and the organization into society of a grace that should strive against all the energies of evil, working as celestial leaven in the earthly meal. This disclosure of the liighest truth from the heavens was first made, this renovating tide into the arteries of a corrupt and collapsing world was first poured, through Jesus Christ. He came that we *' might have life, and have it more abundantly." It seems to me that we misunderstand his mission, unless we see that, in his ministry and person, God came by organic contact into history, so that then the great hour of revival and redemption struck for humanity. But we equally misread the characteristics of his faith, if we do not see that he himself never an- nounced any theory of his personality and preexistent rank as vitally connected with his religion, — to be made a test of sound faith, a proper measure of fel- lowship, or a condition of receiving and transmitting 28* 330 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the regenerating power which he inaugurated among men. After he passed from the world, the Church began to widen beyond Syrian boundaries and the lines of the Old Testament tradition. And then the greatest of the Apostles published the doctrine, and wrought in the power of it, that the Church was to live by the immediate reception and diffusion of the Holy Spirit. We do not generally appreciate or perceive the sweep and implications of St. Paul's thought in this respect. Christianity, to his mind, was the communication of a power to human souls, through Christ, which revealed God directly as the Father^ and wakened the dormant spiritual capacities to intense life. It did this, not by declaring truth abstractly and out- wardly, but by lifting the soul into fellowship with the Divine ; making it a joint-heir of God with Christ ; delivering it from bondage to sin and the slavish ser- vice of an unsympathetic and blasting law by the sup- ply of a celestial strength that raised it to the disposi- tion of free and joyous consecration to the Infinite love. How else shall we read these passages from the Epistles ? " We have the mind of the spirit." " Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you." " The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of MR. king's lecture. 3B1 God." " We have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " " Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which ye have of God ? " " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit ; for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." " We know not what we should pray for as we ought ; but the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Thus Christianity in its first promulgation by St. Paul was a very different thing from a preceptive re- ligion. It was not involved at all with questions of documents. It was not implicated with the veracity of every paragraph of memorabilia. It was not pledged to theories of the plenary and verbal inspira- tion of narratives that differ in a hundred instances of incident and detail. Neither do we find St. Paul hon- oring the conception which a large class of Unitarians have worked out, that the study of the life of Jesus as an example was to be the practical and redeeming force of the gospel. The four biographies were not written when he preached. His own letters were the earliest documents of our New Testament And so 6.yZ PTTTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. it was impossible for him to hold the modern " evan- gelical" conception of Christianity as a legacy of celestial life ; of inspiration in archives, and verified by affidavits ; and of the New Testament as a parch- ment protocol of the Holy Ghost, enclosing the finished and final truth on which Christendom is to live for- ever. If St. Paul could have looked forward into the eighteenth century from his preaching, how would he have been amazed at the general bondage of the Christian mind. We are taught to regard the gospel as a will, published once from heaven, recorded by four transcribers, with various Apostolic codicils, which a believing man is to read over in seasons of despondency. In this way his personal inability to know anything immediately of infinite truth, may be compensated by verbal testimony about God, and his duty, and what Christ once wrought for him, and what definite good is yet in store for him. And thus he may begin or strengthen a life of anticipation, which is what is usually meant by the life of faith ! St. Paul could not have dreamed that the church would ever lapse into such a memorial theory of eter- nal life — into what a living Orthodox writer (living in every sense of the word) has aptly called " a sec- ond-hand religion, a notional religion, distant and dry." The power and value of Christ to him were that MR. king's lecture. 333 he had opened new avenues for a direct access of the Divine Spirit to the soul of man. The grace which Christ instituted as the public and constant dispensa- tion from the infinite life for ail who were willing to receive it, was of unspeakably more moment to him than the recorded fragments of his earthly biography. He held that Christians were to derive their deepest truth, their comfort and their quickening, and their assurance of eternal things, from that, and not from any cunningly coupled paragraphs of sacred tradition, or collated mosaic-work of texts. Over him, and over the whole Church, in his view, was the cross, or rather the figure of Him who bore its pain, and despised its shame, set in the gloom of the pharisaic and heathen sky. Through that sacred form the beams of Infinite truth poured, with the expression of love, wide over the world. Penitence for sin, and faith in the Ineffable grace, purged the eyes of the soul, pagan or Jew, so that it could see more and more clearly that glorious fissure in the black and chilly night, and be sure of the infinite love by direct vision, and receive its beams into the bosom as a cordial power. God was no more to the Apostle's thought a dread Monarch, the haughty Czar of the universe, dwelling in ' unapproachable isolation ; no frosty Holiness, reserving himself from the polluting touch of human evil; no omnipotent Chancellor of the moral realm, administer- ing justice according to technical covenants, and hold- 334 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ing a bankrupt humanity to what is " nominated in the bond ;" no exclusive Patron of one race, accounting all others abominable and accursed forever ; no omnisci- ent and microscopic Critic apportioning His favor according to the nice Pharisaic etiquette of the dis- tant addresses to Him. He was a present, intimate, gracious, and cleansing Spirit. He had cloven the thick firmament of a common iniquity, to come near the dark and alien world with His energy and love. The cross and the form of Jesus set in the zenith of the spiritual heavens were the medium, to give " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God," shrouded before, and to publish His common grace to all nations. Through that figure, incorporating and coloring the Infinite glory that blazed behind it, and diffusing it to all the spaces of the moral world, the soul obtained at once the knowledge of the conspiring agencies of redemption, — Father, Son, and Spirit, — and walked in newness of life in an illuminated world. I must not, and need not, pause here to outline more definitely the Christolqgy of St. Paul, or to refer to sub- sidiary doctrines in his pages. All that it is now essen- tial for us to see is, that the characteristic of St. Paul's conception of Christ as a permanent force in the world was the gift of the Spirit, through the ministry and tiiumph of Christ, as a new organic power upon souls. By the reception of this a man was enabled to live a free, filial, and victorious life in the world. The soul MR. king's lecture. 335 obtained participation in the Divine life. A faculty higher than the natural understanding was awakened and sustained. A life in the atmosphere of the Spirit was the reward and seal of a real conversion to Chris- tian Truth. Through repentance for sin, and the inmost acknowledgment of Jesus as the representative of Infinite grace, the inward doors of the soul were open- ed, and windows were set in its prison walls. The very radiance and breath of the Infinite which Christ had brought into the world by his ministry, and for which he had opened larger channels through his cross, his conquest of death, and his ascension, were diffused into the mind, and conscience, and heart of the disci- ple. He was no longer a servant, but was adopted into the Divine household. It was his privilege then to stand in the same relations towards God that Christ did, — as a son of the everlasting love. By prayer and service the Holy Spuit came into the soul, according to the Apostle's thought, in larger streams. It showed the man his duty by immediate light. It pledged and invigorated his will, and sweetened his affections, and increased his joy. It lifted him above trials and sor- rows, and was stronger in him than the whole outward world. He could say " I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." It made him sure of God's existence and goodness, of eternity and the love of God in eternity, by present revelation, — 336 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. just as the ear is sure of melody, just as the eye is sure of light, and of the deeps of heaven, and the trem- bling stars. The soul became, as it were, according to another figure of the Apostle, a member or fibre of the very body of Jesus. And it no more needed outward and logical testimony of spiritual things, than the fin- ger, warmed and moved by the life-currents of the heart and the purposes of the brain would need, if it were self-conscious, some external proof that it is in connection with the soul. This generous and inspiring, yet humbling and searching truth, around which the Church of Christ was organised in the Apostolic days, is the truth by which it is stiil kept alive. Through this alone it can grow and triumph. -When it talks its early and native tongue, Christianity tells us that the soul is the receptacle of the Spirit. It tells us that the purpose of revelation is fulfilled when it has prepared the soul, by cleansing it of the principle of sin, to receive, and rejoice in, and live out the Divine essence and breath. It invites us " to know the things that are freely given to us of God." It shows us that the words of Jesus in the four Gospels, before they were written or ut- tered, were inward assurances made to his soul of the reality and laws of the spiritual world, of the true and blessed fife, and the Eternal love. And it would lift us to a state of heart in which we shall see those words loosened again into light. It would not MR. ki2s^g's lecture. 337 only make us believe in the faith of Jesus, but by a faith kindred with his. It would have us stand on the other side of the New Testament, in the light of the spirit that pours through its letters and pages, that we may see the book to be far less than the rays of which its chapters are the media. The vital reception of Christianity, therefore, in its highest power — a power kindred with that which thrilled St. Paul — is shown in the soul's experience of the nearness and friendship of the Infinite Spirit. When a man comes to the knowledge that God is not far off, but nearer to his soul than He can be to the material world; when he learns that He is not hostile but cordial, that His frown when the heart is alien is the highest mercy and His wrath is gi'ace ; when he sees that distance from this Paternal love in the choice of evil is slavery, and wretchedness, and spiritual death, and, with a faith that purifies and jus- tifies at once, pledges himself to the Divine sanctity and compassion for all service and trust ; when in the fulfilment of that great vow he lives in a deepening reverence for justice, a regard for truth that grows ever more devout, a sensitive recoil from evil, and above all a love that pours blessings and a sweet atmosphere of charity into society ; when still further, feeling that God by His indwelling Spirit is the sub- stance and support of his dearest life, the man sees the whole world illumined, so that the Eternal shines 29 338 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. everywhere through the temporal, and nature is only the vesture or language of Sph'it, and nothing is so certain as God's thought and providence in all things; and when such sense of the Infinite and such vision prompt and nourish humility and prayerfulness in the heart, and life becomes a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and a peace which death does not threaten and wIiIcjI sorrow cannot break broods in the sanctuaries of ilie soul, — then there is an echo in our century to the experience of Paul who found the supreme privilege and bliss of his faith in Jesus in the spring which it stimulated him to make from the earth and its darl:- ness, and the law and its bondage, into the light and the arms of Infinite Grace. There are very few who reach guch a state as this. But we all need it to answer the end of our being, and to satisfy the deepest thirst of an awakened moral nature. We were all born from the Eternal life. And we receive our inheritance only when we begin con- sciously, and by consecration, to draw our innermost life from God. We feed on husks, we live in shad- ows, we drink from no undrainable fountains, until the immortal principle is so far stimulated by the Divine quickening, that the germ and promise of such an experience of the infinite life and acceptance is in the soul. And it matters not how the nature acquires that quickening. It matters not by what immediate agency 339 we are borne up into a consecrated state, and the vision of Divine things, and the joy of the Spirit. It may be by the slow intermixing of grace, in domestic education. It may be, in adult years, by deepening experience of unrest in the satisfactions which the world gives when the forces of life are prosperous. It may be by the gnawing sense of bondage in corrupt habits. It may be by the torment bubbling up through memory from some crime. It may be by the pain of bereaved affections. Meditation on the swiftness, the shadows, and the mysteries of existence here, may impel the heart to it. Or some reading of the New Testament, when the letter, instead of encrusting the truth, blazes with immeasurable meaning, may drive the soul to it. Or the study of some devoted man's biography, or the hearing of some awakening religious eloquence, may supply the last stimulant for which the spirit waited. Methods are innumerable. Meth- ods are indifferent. T© get the soul aroused, to get the will polarized by the currents of heaven, to get selfishness smitten from conscious or unconscious con- trol of the heart, and love installed there as the vivify- ing force, to get the man on the side of truth, an organ of justice, a helper of the oppressed, a channel of charity, a pillar of righteousness, a child of God in the dedication of his powers, and a direct recipient of the divine forgiveness, light and favor, by the uncover- ing of his once shrouded soul to the breath and beams 340 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. of the Spirit, — this is what is needed ; this, however it be wrought, is what Christ welcomes and rejoices over in the world of substance, as one of the blessed sequences of his ministry ; this is a vital appropriation of the truth and grace he instituted ; this is a modern victory of the Holy Ghost. Now, when we see that spiritual Christianity is manifest in a life of freely consecrated service to the Almighty Father, whose character was revealed through Christ, and whose spirit struggles with every soul, we must see that the quickening power of it is not indissolubly involved with any of the dogmas that divide and classify Christendom. A great many per- sons seem to believe that a conviction of the separate personality of the Holy Spirit is essential to a recep- tion of it. And it is no offence against charity to say that a large portion of the religious teachers in the Protestant world would look with suspicion upon any statement of a Christian faith and experience that is not moulded in the stereotyped vocabulary of the " Evangelical " metaphysics of redemption. The life, however devout and consciously embosomed in the Infinite Spirit, is felt to be spurious if it is not coined into verbal expression out of their pinched glossary of grace. As it is said that a prominent preacher of an antagonistic sect pronounced one of the most devoted men whom the Unitarian Church has nurtured — now gone to his reward — "the best counterfeit of a Chris- 341 tian that was ever seen." We all need to see that the lexicon of the spirit is a polyglot, and of marvellous compass, too. All the creeds, broken up into words and distributed, would not make a tithe of its ver- nacular. In its first movement in Christian history the Spi- rit was unfettered by creeds in the modern sense. St. Paul had no theology, according to our use of that term, and no literature, to impose as law for the Church and as the channel of grace in the future of Christendom. He struggled with all his fervor to get the idea of a free and common communication of the Divine Spirit to all races, through a risen head of our humanity, enthroned over the whole Christian mind as its Only mental creed and bond. What we call his theology was mostly his interpretation of the religious records and movements of the past, — and that for an immediate, pressing and temporary issue. He strove to prove to the Jewish half of the church that, out of their own documents, they were condemned for ex- clusiveness in denying the equal interest in all nations by the plan of Infinite Providence ; that their own historic books and covenants hinted and forecast a grace to be manifested, on terms of faith, and not of blood, to evefy nation. When this opposition on the pnrt of the Jews and Jewish converts was once re- moved as a practical, embarrassment of the broad and simple organization of Christendom into one moral 29* 342 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. body, he would leave the Church in the open day of the Divine Spirit. The most of the book of Romans was aimed as a practical blow at the Pharisaic creed and tradition within the Church ; for that stood in the Way of the willingness to acknowledge the free dispensation of God's grace and breath to every man, Gentile as well as Hebrew, that was willing to re- nounce his sins and believe in Eternal love. And St. Paul would have accounted that book perfectly suc- cessful in its purpose, if it had left the Church with no dogma but the risen Christ as the representative and channel of a spirit pouring from God into hu- manity to renew, consecrate, and illumine every nature that would open itself to its power. And the New Testament documents taken together do not present any shapen, interlocked, symmetrical system of Christianity to the understanding. They were never intended to fix the form, and to configure infinite truth for the intellect of a Church that was to endure thousands of years in an advancing civiliza- tion. It is very difficult for any scholar, studying the facts without prejudice, to make the philosophy of re- ligion by St. James coincide with that of St. Paul ; or the metaphysical estimate of Jesus' rank in St. Mark equivalent with that in St. John ; or th# conceptions of the church in the Apocalypse and in Galatians identical. We do not get the light of theological science in equal clearness, or in harmonious hues, from MR. king's lecture. 343 those fragments of the primitive thought of the church. But we do get the spirit thorough them in uniform in- tensity. They give us truth of the eternal order ; heat, and electric currents, and charges from the invis- ible world, in equal jneasures. Of what consequence is it how adequately or how accordantly they convey the perceptions of the infinite reason in the mysteries of theology, if they flood us with the deeper truth of the infinite essence ; if they are batteries for shedding the ^'powers of the world to come " on the torpid con- science, the disloyal or flaccid will, the corrupt imagi- nation, the withering heart ; if they make us feel the holiness, the justice, the unsounded charity of God ; if they restore the proportions of things to our moral vision, reducing this world to a speck within the soul's world, and curtained from it by a film that may break for us to-morrow ? Ah, how brutally those marvellous records have been treated under our theories of a minute and infal- lible intellectual inspiration ! How men have crushed and cut them to make poetry, and precept, and vision, and mystic vagueness of utterance, and oriental hyper- bole, and hot rhetoric for an emergency, and well- weighed judgments, and lyric raptures, fit together like the puzzle-maps of wood with which children play, into an outlined chart of eternal wisdom, consistent and complete ! Is it not more reverent and wise to look at those chapters as fragmentary scrolls of an 3 1:4 PITTS-STREET CnAPEL LECTURES. inspiration that breathed the forces and not the science of the infinite into the first generation of Christendom? Shall we not see them set around the pure splendor of the Spirit, deeply tinged with different human tempera- ments, as types of the diverse genius which the gospel has sanctified in history ? Shall we not let them show the riches of its light, and pour it, now in the strong moral colors of the Synoptics, now in the paler medita- tive tints of the fourth biography, now through the lit- erature of faith as the central sentiment, now through the portraiture of a heroic will, now through an un- folded experience of a love that reclines on the sunny bosom of infinite tenderness, now through the rapt longing and expectation of the melting of these flimsy time-walls, to let in the fierce justice and final peace of the millennial day ? Are we told that these records are all in unison, since they all make Christ the centre of their theology, and the channel of the highest truth and mercy ? So they do. But shall we not see through what different visions of his outline and majesty the spirit streamed upon them? There is the Prophet- Christ of Mat- thew; the Logos-Christ of John; the Ethnic and Me- diatorial Christ of Paul ; the Judicial Christ of James ; the Priestly Christ of the Hebrews; the administrative and imperial Christ of P^evelations, with eyes as a flame of fire, and seven stars in his right hand. Througli these conceptions of the Son of Man, equally vivid, MR. king's lecture. 345 but drawn on unequal scales of official grandeur, and variously hued, the^ redeeming truth gushed into the souls of the earliest teachers of Christendom, and then into the church. It was prophetic thus of the fulness of nourishment in Christianity for all temperaments, and the freedom to be granted to all future ages in conceiving of the proportions of Christ as the channel of the Holy Ghost. And we have a right to say now, in the interest of vital Christianity, that all theories of Christ's rank and office, and all catechism and creeds, are indifferent to the Spirit, so far as they belong to the speculative science of the Infinite, or to the philosophical inter- pretation of Scripture. This is the great question: how near is the man to the Spirit of God ? how closely does the Christ he believes in bring him to the Infinite? how richly does he interpret to him the character of the Almighty — his equity, his providence, his interest in righteousness, his love ? It is ivorking- truth, truth for redemption, truth that cleanses the passions, truth that burns the clouded conscience, truth that wrenches the cowardly will, truth that knocks at the heart with sweet and serious pleading, in which the spirit hides. A notional Trinity or a notional Unity it cares not for, any more than it cares for your conception of how many strata are in the surface of the globe, or how the sun's light is connected with his substance. When the doctrine of the Trinity represents to you, 346 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. and brings to a focus upon your soul, the truths that God is the substance and patron of all law and right- eousness, that He is unspeakably hostile to all evil, that He has come into history through a perfect form of our humanity to break the power of evil, and that His spirit is now the quickening impulse of all private excellence and public good, — you believe in a religion essentially true, a perfect religion. And if you feel that a change in that conception of the Infinite to a belief in the Unity of the divine nature would make God more distant, and the authority of Christianity less potent, and its grace more pallid, and the earth a less serious and sacred spot in immensity, then, al- though I were sure that the statement of the divine Unity is true, I should *pray heaven that you might not be brought to see it ; for you would only gain a truth of arithmetic, and might lose a truth of life. But if you find that your Unitarian neighbor feels the Spirit of God no less near, and His law no less sacred, and His love no less deep, and Christianity no less manifestly a movement of grace, through his concep- tion of Christ; and if his life is no less consecrated, and pours out no less of integrity, and bounty, and filial fragrance, do you not see that the Spirit passes through his dogma to his heart, just as it has through yours ? There may be fifty doctrines of the Spirit ; as there may be fifty theories of the light, and of how it is gene- MR. king's lecture. 347 rated from the sun, and of how its beam is stranded, and of how fast it travels to the earth, and of how it gains entrance to the human eye. There is only one science of the spirit ; as there is only one science, or accurate conception of the origin, structure, speed and office of the sunshine. But the fact of the presence of the light, of its institution in this world, through the sun, by providential goodness, and of the equal de- pendence of every body upon it for sight and enjoy- ment, are not altered by the theories which human beings hold. We all live in the vast natural church of light, Yv^hether we have Newton's conception, or Young's conception, or Goethe's conception of its cause and composition ; nay, whether or not we have cared to work out any conception of these. And the man with the inadequate theory, or the false theory, or no theory, sees just as well as the man with the true one, if he conforms to the practical laws of vision. It is the spiritual truth which looks through the creed that is the all-important element so far as the person is concerned. Ah, v e cannot tell by the writ- ten confession what the vital characteristics of the man's faith or of his belief are. St. Paul determined to know no other formula than the Cross of Christ. But what did it mean to him ? We have seen that it meant the breaking out of divine love towards all mankind; it meant the equal spiritual rights of all races ; it meant a perfect moral providence ; it meant 348 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the condemnation of Pharisaism as high treason against humanity ; it meant the abolition of all cove- nant-grace ; it meant that humility, charity, self-sacri- fice, is the law of the moral universe ; it meant that men need no more pine here as prisoners, but could burst through faith " into the air of that supernatural life which God lives eternally." In a word, it meant just the opposite of the system into which the old school Calvinism has petrified the book of Romans. The cross of Christ is thus preached now in the Trini- tarian Church by men like Bushnell, and Kingsley, and Maurice, and Robertson, and Stanley, and is inter- preted thus by theologians like Jowett, and scholars like Bunsen ; and it is the sign of the purest faith and most adequate conception of Christianity in our time. Other men preach the cross of Christ, and it means horror more than inspiration, wrath more than grace, doom more than deliverance, partiality instead of uni- versality, Infinite hatred more than pity ; for the little light that leaks through it into history from the heart of Christ, and falls upon the sparse elect, only relieves the black background of Omnipotent law, and enables us to take the awful census of the damned. We repeat that it is the spiritual expression that steals through our dogma, the fulness with which it interprets the holy character and searching influence of God, the nearness it makes us feel of the Eternal world to our world, and not simply its logical accuracy, MR. king's lecture. 310 'cliat attests the vital presence of the Spirit in it. The soul is reached religiously by methods of art, rather than by methods of science. It is the amount of quick- ening truth with which our creed is translucent that helps us, — just as it is the sweetness and depth of saintly beauty, and not the literal, historic, or possible verity of the person or the scene, that moves us in one of Raffaelle's groups, and advances art. If the doctrine of an evil nature makes you feel more intensely the wrong, wretchedness, and peril of sin, and makes you a watchful and prayerful ^man, you are practically nearer to the truth than your Unitarian friend who denies the Church doctrine of the fall of Adam, holds that sin is a personal perversion of the will, and has no deep consciousness of the guilt and poverty of aliena- tion from God. He holds, I should say, the secular truth of the case ; you the internal and essential truth. But with his convictions, even though they be errone- ous, if he is no less sensitive than you to a violation of truth, to a stain on his integrity, to passing an un- charitable judgment, or circulating a slander, or bolster- ing iniquity by a vote, or being found in any way hos- tile to God, and keeps his soul open to the divine life for purification and strength, — both of you have the essential truth. The Spirit is equally near you. It uses your dogma with equal readiness, and with indiffer- ence to its philosophic validity or weakness. I do not argue that truth of creed is unimportant 30 350 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. I do not say that a symmetrical and pure theology, an adequate intellectual interpretation of the office of Christ and the meaning of Christianity, is not a most desirable thing. But I say that unless a man values and uses his conception of Christ, or his creed, as a medium of the Spirit, as a lens to condense the radiance of the everlasting world upon his soul, ^per- fect surface-belief is of no account. Some creeds have truth and little power; others have pov/er and very little truth. The men of science tell us now that there is a very subtle chemical energy in the sun- ray — as it were the soul of it — which is different from its light-giving and its heating properties. Cer- tain glasses stained dark-blue will admit scarcely any light, and yet will offer no interruption to the passage of this mysterious force. On the contrary a yellow glass, which transmits almost undiminished the inten- sity of the light, will completely cut off this chemical principle, whatever it be. So we cannot fail to see how some head-creeds of darkest blue, that one would think must make the universe dismal and life a bitter bondage, will transmit the vital effluence of the Holy Spirit to many a believer's heart. While other people may diffuse and live in the full intellectual radiance of a true philosophy of the Gospel, and receive through it nothing of that thrilling energy which is twisted in with the pure light of Eternity, and in which the Gospel attests its power. So that the important MR. king's lecture. 351 question is, not what we think of the Holy Spirit, but what the Spirit thinks of us, and of 4he truth we have worked into form. Does God use it for his regenerative purposes ? Does He make it the me- dium of His most secret and quickening grace ? Of course, we ought to have both pure light and vital power. The success of Christianity as a general force, is obstructed sadly, I believe, by the false inter- pretations of Scripture, the harsh metaphysics of God and his government, and the distorted philosophy of the spiritual world and of life, that are preached in connection with it. There are thousands within the fold of the Trinitarian organizations who are regener- ated by the spirit that finds its way through their bit- terest formulas. The intellectual grimness of the for- mulas is pushed into the background for them. But Vve ought not to overlook the fact that other thousands are repelled from religion, and are either made more worldly, or are driven out into a cold natural goodness, by the intellectual extravagances of utter depravity, and a selfish Infinite, and an arbitrary doom of eternal punishment for a single sin, which the creeds exhibit to their reason, and which will stand out in the fore- ground. For every person that will be turned to a reverent and devoted life by the revival that so many good men in the sacrificial church are now rejoicing over, it is doubtless true that two at least have been alienated from real Christianity by its distorted the- 352 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. ology. Many of these have been restored, wholly or in measure, tlirough the agency of such intellectual conceptions of life, and Jesus, and the Almighty Fathei", as Channing preached. We should bear this in mind when we are taking into account the wide re- lations of the Church to society, and when the fervors of the prominent Trinitarian sects are contrasted com- placently with the coldness of the Liberal Christian administration of religion. If we could have the Orthodox earnestness poured through a corrected scheme of doctrine, — a scheme that allows more scope for the influence of the Holy Spirit than the earlier English Unitarianism did, and which rises to the high temperature of St. Paul's feel- ing as to its striving, convincing, irradiating, sweeten- ing presence ; a doctrine fusing the essential concep- tions of Chalmers, Marteneau and Arnold, — we should have a revival of religion whose statistics could not be grouped by hundreds. The heart of the nation would respond to it like the verdure of May after April rain. And now it is time to ask what relation Christianity, considered as the diffusive agency of the Divine Spirit, bears to institutions. Some men cannot disconnect — their theory will not allow them to disconnect — the religion of Jesus from a priestly order of men, a sys- tem of government, rituals in churches, and visible lines of division between a party with Christian badges on them, and the unregeuerate mass of the 353 world. This conception is wrought out in full pro- portions in the Catholic theory of a separate spiritual polity in civilization. When a Catholic talks with you about the Church of Christ as a social power, he means nothing more, and he cannot conceive how anything else can be meant by it, than the miraculous diffusion of Di- vine grace through Pope, Bishops, Decrees, Clergy, Sacraments, to those people who believe in Pope, and Clergy, and Sacraments, and who go to them regularly for help and nutriment. The visible organization of the Church is, to the devout Catholic, the immense and divine-built battery for the spiritual electricity of heaven. And no one can receive a stream or spark of it, until he visibly joins hands with the faithful around the Altar, and obtains it from the magical touch of the Priest. Most of the Protestant sects, though their theories are far less imposing than this one of the Roman hie- rarchy, still cling to the idea — some with greater, some with less fulness of proportion in theii' schemes — that Christianity has some material channels which are divinely instituted (and so as precious as the religion itself) through which its saving virtue pours. The Church of Christ to them is still, in some sense, a Cor- poration. And a man in becoming a part of it must pass visibly, by some act or profession before men, from the side of the world where there is no grace, to 30* 354 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. the ecclesiastical side where help is ready for him, if he fulfils the conditions on which it is offered. Over these conceptions of Christianity must be set such an estimate of institutions as will fit the fact that the gospel of Christ has been put into society as an all- penetrating force of social redemption. See how Jesus always interpreted the action and the future of the re- generative power concentrated in him through imagery drawn from the most free and diffusive energies in na- ture. That spirit that vivifies the world, moves like the wind, — no more to be included within the bounda- ries of sect and sacrament, than the wind can be en- compassed by cathedrals and council-domes. Again, the forces of his truth are seeds, scattered not over a few ecclesiastical acres, but over the field of the world, to be nourished by the unsectarian light and rain. And "the kingdom of God is within you," so that the power of it in the world is exactly equal to the truth, and the sweetness, and the aspiration, and the devotion to God and man, that hide as qualities in human bosoms, and stream as influence from them into society. Still fur- ther, " the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal." It works not from an organized, visible, and aggressive centre, but as an interpenetrating, vivifying force. You cannot mechanically separate the vitality from the dead resistance. It works by secret agency to make eacl* particle alive, and a new germ of life. 355 The Christianity of the Spirit, therefore, is the sum of all the redeeming life-forces in our civilization. Nothing less than all the arteries of society are its ducts* Since the day of Pentecost the renovating forces of history are its vesture. Just as the quicken- ing element of the Gospel is not dogma, and will not be imprisoned in dogma, but will look through it and stream through it even when it is unsymmetrical and ungracious, — so it is not an ecclesiastical institution, and will not be imprisoned in any or all of them. But it uses them all for its purposes : Mediaeval, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Moravian, Congregational, Quaker, and countless other agencies besides. For social worship there must be, of course, some special rites, and order, and bonds ; and those in which different classes of believers feel most free, and find most joy, are best for them. Yet the Spirit is not pledged to any order as a polity for Christendom. And where the most symmetrical order and liturgy become an occasion of complacency, and pride, and aristocratic schism of the heart from the community of believers, the polity is not of the Spirit at all. It is an encroachment of " this world," an entrenchment of the " natural man " within the ar@a that is supposed to be especially consecrated to Christ. Apostolical suc- cession, for instance, is no more possible as a law for the Church than an equivalent theory would be in the world of Art. Think of trying to institute in such a 356 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. way, the right and the gift of teaching beauty I Think of a hierarchical pretension in the artistic world, claim- ing that only the students upon whom Rafiaelle, or Michael Angelo, or Murillo, or E-ubens, or Reynolds, or West, or Turner, or Allston, had laid his hands, were rightfully consecrated and equipped to paint, and to educate the taste of men ! By all means have stud- ies, and studios,, and thorough intercourse with the master-pieces of ages. But leave room for genius, ^ — its freedom, its new methods, and its fire. And do not try to conduct the potent and volatile essence of in- spiration which flows only from the laying on of God's hand, along the fixed methods of any confederation. The spirit broods over society to vitalize it, and not exclusively over the church. That is especially the church where the most power is present. Let us not think that the Infinite grace has followed the method for distributing His Gospel, which men have adopted to secure a supply of water for this city from the neighboring lake. He has not mechanically laid water-pipes of altar, ritual and liturgy, to transmit and diffuse it in unchanging ways to every soul. His are rather the methods in His church, by which the bounteous rain is distributed and stored. It falls on the mountain slopes; it collects in rills; it combines into streams and rivers ; it hides underground, and bubbles in fountains. Now it floods all its channels; now it leaves the old beds to cut new paths for its Mu. king's lecture. 357 leaping music ; and it will often burst up in fresh dis- tricts to gladden the ground with beauty. So the Spirit has not shown itself partial to any organization of ecclesiastical order. It leaves the old Catholic corporation, to stimulate the world through Luther and the Reformers. And it is just as ready to break out again through the Catholic forms, and retreat from Protestant ones, when any branch of the elder church puts itself in the condition to invite its grace, and the new church prefers to live on memory, and begins to be proud, formal, and cruel. It delights to pour itself through preaching and the Sunday, just to the extent that the preacher has a receptive soul, and the people have hearing hearts. It streams through the holiest sacrament, and most freely when those that commune offer life as a service of thanks- giving and sacrifice to the Infinite love in the spirit of Christ, and ask for more of its breath. But we must not forget that it leaps out of a church as freely as into it. It makes a good book its channel rather than a proud bishop, though the book be written by an un- professing layman. It discharges immeasurably more of its essence through such a novel a^ " Little Dorritt" than through such volumes as Dr. Breckinridge's " Knowledge of God objectively consideied." It no more acknowledges a religious newspaper as its organ than a secular one, if it is not humbly edited, and does not increase the sway of meekness and charity 358 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. in those that read it, — a very severe test for many of them. A useless and juiceless chm*ch-member, ex- pending his energies and prayers on his own salvation, adds to its working force about as much as a lump of ice serves as an organ of heat, or a piece of charcoal as a reflector of the light. It moves through all the efforts, all the eloquence, all the literature, all the homes, all the charity organizations, all the laws, all the public bounties, that are interpreting sweet and serious truth, nourishing goodness, spreading the sway of the spirit of sacrifice, banishing injustice, making the world less selfish, and more pious. For these are hastening the true Millennium, when all law, all government, all literature, all life shall be pure and reverent and charitable ; and when society shall be organized by Christ's spirit, and become the Church, and thus the whole lump be leavened. We have seen, thus far, that Christianity was the infusion of new life from God through Jesus Christ, and the pouring of His spirit into humanity as a public grace. Its first medium was the conception of Jesus in his risen glory as the representative of a redeemed humanity, the mirror of the Divine love, and the diffusing channel of the Holy Spirit, to all who were willing by direct faith in the Infinite Father through him, to begin a filial life. We have seen that it was not involved with any metaphysics of the Heavenly world, or of depravity, or of the commer- MR. king's lecture. 359 cial, legal, or governmental value of Christ's suffer- ing, or with any rigid philosophical system, or with any ecclesiastical institutions and polity as a final law for Christendom. We have seen that Christian- ity, in its inmost and its primal power, is manifest in any man, whatever his belief, who feels the Divine Spirit as his light and joy, and serves and worships God, through the gracious coloring which the char- acter of Jesus has cast upon the All-perfect One, in consecrated fidelity and trust, and as a lover of his kind. Here, therefore, we have something to say upon the development of the life and thought of Christen- dom and the meaning and usefulness of sects. The Church was left unhampered by creeds from the pen of Jesus, or of Apostles, to work out its science of theology freely, — as all science is worked out through error, through cumulative effort, and through failure, — and to add to the riches of its vital literature by a manifold and ever multiplying experience. We are in the era of the Spirit, and the Church is to- day under the pressure and guidance of the Holy Ghost. The theology which the church has as yet amassed, is not to be accounted specially venerable- and author- itative by reason of age and rescription. For the intellect of the race has not, until recently, had favor- able conditions to apply itself powerfully and without 360 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTUKES. prejudice to the science of the Divine mind, of Ihe soal, and of the relations of the eternal world to time. Most of the leading tenets of our popular theology in their intellectual shape belong to the darker ages of Christian history. The conception of the Trinity was not perfected till many generations after the Apostles, when the shadow was stealing over ancient civiliza- tion that was to produce a full eclipse. And it was not until the close of the eleventh century that our " evangelical " doctrine of the atonement was clearly stated by Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury. These are the vital centres of the popular faith. What has grown up thus in time, and without satisfying the in- tellect of universal Christendom, (for the mind of the church has been so fretted and tormented by those dogmas that it does not lie long at ease on any shap- ing of them) may perish in time. Christendom is young. Look forward a hundred centuries, and see if you can imagine that the intellect of the Church will then be tethered to the metaphysics of religion shaped before modern science and philosophy and poetry were born. We cannot tell yet what the theol- ogy of Christendom is to be. The sects that have arisen thus far have each helped, through their difler- ences, to accumulate evidence, by appearing as wit- nesses or counsel in the court of history for some oppressed or slighted truth. But the sects have done a greater service by trhow MR. king's lecture. 36 i ing us, with more and more varied and copious illus- tration, how deep and rich, how sweet and sublime, is spiritual Christianity itself, when it issues in Jts appro- priate literature of sentiment and life. Lord Bacon spoke of the ample and graceful classic mythology as the airs of earlier ages breathed into the trumpets and pipes of the Grecians. So Christianity, of which the Spii'it struck the key-notes in the souls of Apostles in Palestine, has been widening in variation and deepen- ing in harmony with all the consecrated temperaments that have risen in the ages thus far to articulate its airs. We must pierce below the creed-symbols of each party in Christian history, and find the justification and necessity of its existence in the fresh quality ol its sentiment, or the new movement or modulation by wliich it has enriched the compass of the symphony of grace. Think of the range of the literature of Christian de- voutness and insight. It runs from the " Shepherd of Hermas " and the prayers of the earliest liturgies, touching different keys in different centuries and sects, till it includes now Augustine's Communion with God, a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, Tauler's Sermons, the Meditations of Archbishop Leighton and Bishop Hall, Fenelon's Letters, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Swedenborg's Divine Love and Wisdom, Edward's sweet thoughts of Christ, Wes- leyan hymns, Martineau's Endeavours after the Chris- tian Life, Theodore Parker's Ten Sermons, and New- 81 362 PITTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. man on the Soul. That belongs to essential Christi- anity, spiritual Christianity, which issues in the quick- ening power of these books, and gleams out in the life of all consecrated men, whether they be men of action, of suffering, or of prayer. All are necessary to enable us to appreciate Christianity. For it is continually unfolding itself in history. And the Spirit needs every aperture of race, and temperament, and culture, to work out fully the mighty theme whose notes are printed in the first Scriptures of the church. The growth of the church as the interpreter of Christianity through the ages thus far seems to me the gradual building of a majestic organ. The final justi- fication of each sect is found when we can regard . it as a new stop, or class of pipes, with an original con- stitution and quality, to pour out some essential senti- ment with nobler volume, or richer melody, in response to the glory of God. It is the Spirit that struggles and sings through all. Some articulate, perhaps, the more necessary, others the more ornamental phrasings of everlasting truth. No sect alone can yield the full- proportioned music. The Calvinistic creed may not agree with the intellectual truth of things. Possibly no consecutive or selected propositions of it will. But there is a severity and stringency in the law of God and its hold upon us, that justifies the solemn and often hoarse sub-bass which we catch predominantly from the Calvinistic pipes. While we are under sin, MR. king's lecture. 3G3 such is the ground-tone of the truth of things. If you say that the law arbitrarily dooms a soul to eternal woe, you. misinterpret it ; if you strilve it from your concep- tion of the universe, you debilitate the Gospel, and strike out the pedal terrors, that, none the less for Christ's coming, roar around a deliberately evil choice. The Methodist cluster of pipes waken for us, when they are opened, more of the gamut of grace. We draw them for the hallelujahs. Some stops are ranged fbx the mystic melodies that flow from the key-note of the Gospel of John. There are wailing pipes to tell of a depravity of human life^ dreadful as the plummet of Augustine ever sounded ; and to balance them the reeds of cheer so publish the glory of human nature high and lustrous as the vision that charmed the up- ward look of Channing. There is the practical range answering to that solid substance in true religion which no moralists, wedded to the Epistle of James, can set forth too roughly. And there are keys to in- terpret the correspondences between the celestial and the visible world, which are as penetrating and com- prehensive as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the un- counted volumes of Swedenborg would disclose. Others are the Dulciana stops to sprinkle the sweet- ness of the Gospel. And surely the truth of the love of God, his patient, pleading, never -tiring love, is sweet as the most trusting Universalism, the Viol d' Amour stop in Christendom, ever breathed. The 364 PTTTS-STREET CHAPEL LECTURES. Universalists m^j be wrong in plentiful instances in their rendering of texts, and the combination of proofs for their doctrine from Scripture ; but in this senti- ment, and in their faith that the love of God for eacii soul will last as long as His justice, and as long as eternity, they are not wrong. Only, both the truths must go together. The grace and the bass must inter- blend, one giving body to the other, — neither must be hampered by fetters of time,. or interpreted in regard to time, — before you get the true harmony of the Spirft. And now, if I may gather up all that I have been trying to say through this too long discourse in a statement suggested by this last symbol of the organ, let me say that only those elements of the faith and life of every church that can pass up into anthems, chants, and hymns, as an offering to the Infinite, — only those sentiments which can be set to music, — are its worthy and enduring elements. You cannot put proofs of the Trinity, or controversial supports of the Unity of God, — the logic of Bishop Bull, or the arguments of Professor Norton, — into hymns. You cannot put the difference between a feeling of the depravity cf nature, and of the depravity of con- duct and life, into a Psalm. When three souls feel equally the riches of Infinite love, though one receives it through a Trinitarian, another through an Arian, another through a Humanitarian dogma, you could not put their disputes about the size of the win- MR. king's lecture. 365 dow through which they obtain their light, into a chorus. You cannot chant rubrics, and the hostilities of catechisms, and thirty-nine Articles, and Canons of the Council of Trent, and damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed. But reverence for God, devout prostration before the law which "the Father" represents; penitent love answering to the pity and sacrifice which " The Son " interprets, and devotion to humanity out of such con- secration; joy in the ever-present grace, and prayer for the quickening life which " The Spirit " symbolizes ; adoration of Infinite holiness, submission to Infinite sovereignty, grateful trust in Infinite compassion, — sentiments in which, when developed free, Trinitarian and Unitarian, Calvinist and Arminian, Partialist and Universalist, come at once into fellowship, — these fly to music for expression. We shall drop our contentions about Trinity and Unity, about free will and constraining election, when we reach heaven. We may not understand, even to eternity, the constitution of the Infinite personality ; but alienations on account of mental measurings of substantial truth will not obtain there. There will be no reverend Angels to preach on such themes as, Why am I a Calvinist, a Baptist, or an Episcopalian ? But no doubt we shall still be ranged there, as here, by the sentiments to which we most naturally give utter- ance. And we shall see there, doubtless, what need SGG Pr;TS-STREET CHAPEL LECTUPEB. there is of the utmost power of every party to celebrate the circle of the Divine glory; how deep is the justice, how broad the providence, how high the love, that must he acknowledged in the twined harmony of heavenly hosannas. Let us pray that we may yield oar mind and will to the Spirit ; that by its light we may see through our creeds into the all-important verities of the substantial world ; that we may be in life and worship instru- ments of Christian music, more than soldiers of Cai- vinistic or Unitarian camps ; and that we may be lifted, at last, by the Spirit to that world where we shall experience the truth that, " whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there l>e tongues, tliey shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away " before the charity that " never faileth," which gives the " unity of the Spirit," and is " the ful- filling of the law."