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THE 0HUKCH-1DEA 
 
 ESSAY TOWABDS UNIT1 
 
 WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON 
 
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 'CHRISTO ET ECCLESI^" 
 
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THE CHURCH-IDEA 
 
 AN 
 
 ESSAY TOWABDS UNITY 
 
 WILLIAM EEED HUNTINGTON 
 
 HECTOR OF ALL-SAINTS WORCESTER 
 
 ♦CHRISTO ET ECCLESI^" 
 
 Legend of the third Seal of Harvard College 
 
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PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The following papers contain some things 
 which in a purely theological treatise would be 
 superfluous. But clergymen are not the only 
 public the writer has had in mind. There is, 
 in America, a constantly widening circle of 
 educated and thoughtful people who take a 
 keen interest in such subjects as are here dis- 
 cussed, but whom it would be unreasonable to 
 credit with any extended knowledge either of 
 Church History or of Systematic Divinity. The 
 book is chiefly meant for readers of this class. 
 Care has therefore been taken to free the argu- 
 ment, in its main drift, alike from technicalities 
 of language and obscurities of allusion. Every- 
 thing of an exclusively professional interest has 
 been thrown into the foot-notes, and can be 
 readily avoided. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Gospel of the Kingdom .... 9 
 II. The Thought and its Clothing ... 29 
 
 III. Romanism: the Idea Exaggerated . . 50 
 
 IV. Puritanism: the Idea Diminished . . 75 
 V. Liberalism: the Idea Distorted . . .95 
 
 VI. The American Problem .... 118 
 
 VII. Reconciliation 144 
 
 Appendix 218 
 
THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 Dissatisfaction is the one word that 
 best expresses the state of mind in which 
 Christendom finds itself to-day. There is a 
 wide-spread misgiving that we are on the 
 eve of momentous changes. Unrest is every- 
 where. We hear about Roman Councils, 
 and Anglican Conferences, and Evangelical 
 Alliances, about the question of the Temporal 
 Power, the dissolution of Church and State, 
 and many other such like things. They all 
 have one meaning. The party of the Papacy 
 and the party of the Reformation, the party 
 of orthodoxy and the party of liberalism, are 
 all alike agitated by the consciousness that a 
 spirit of change is in the air. 
 
 No wonder that many imagine themselves 
 listening to the rumbling of the chariot- 
 wheels of the Son of Man. He Himself 
 
10 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 predicted that " perplexity " should be one 
 of the signs of His coming, and it is certain 
 that the threads of the social order have 
 seldom been more seriously entangled than 
 they now are. 
 
 A calmer and perhaps truer inference is 
 that we are about entering upon a new reach 
 of Church history, and that the dissatisfaction 
 and perplexity are only transient. There is 
 always a tumult of waves at the meeting of 
 the waters : but when the streams have 
 mingled, the flow is smooth and still again. 
 The plash and gurgle that we hear may mean 
 something like this. 
 
 At all events the time is opportune for a 
 discussion of the Church-Idea ; for it is with 
 this, hidden under a hundred disguises, that 
 the world's thoughts are busy. Men have 
 become possessed with an unwonted longing 
 for unity, and yet they are aware that they 
 do not grapple successfully with the practical 
 problem. Somehow they are grown per- 
 suaded that union is God's work, and sep- 
 aration devil's work : but the persuasion only 
 breeds the greater discontent. That is what 
 lies at the root of our unquietness. There 
 is a felt want and a felt inability to meet the 
 want ; and where these two things coexist 
 there must be heat of friction. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 11 
 
 Catholicity is what we are reaching after, 
 but how is Catholicity to be defined ? and 
 when we have got our definition, what are 
 we to do with it ? The speculative and the 
 practical sides of the question are about 
 equally difficult to meet. The men of the 
 " Counter Council " at Naples, and the Boston 
 " Free Religionists " are, in their way, as zeal- 
 ous for Catholicity as the Conclave of Car- 
 dinals ; but how differently they understand 
 the term ! The humanitarian scheme would 
 make the Church conterminous with the 
 race ; the ultramontane would bound it by 
 the Papal decrees. 
 
 Clearly we have come upon a time for the 
 study of first principles, a time to go down 
 and look after the foundations upon wdiich 
 our customary beliefs are built. The more 
 searching the analysis, the more lasting will 
 the synthesis be sure to be. 
 
 The present papers presuppose in the 
 reader a certain amount of Christian faith, 
 enough, at least, to give him a general in- 
 terest in the subject under review. They 
 do not, however, take for granted any def- 
 inite conclusions as to the nature or intent 
 of the Christian Church. We will begin, 
 therefore, at the beginning, with the Church- 
 Idea itself. 
 
12 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 And first of all this very expression must 
 be justified. What is the Church-Idea ? 
 
 Briefly it is this, that the Son of God came 
 down from heaven to be the Saviour not 
 only of men, but of man ; to bring " good 
 tidings of great joy " not only to every 
 separate soul, but also to all souls collectively. 
 He died, not only to save the scattered sheep, 
 but to gather them that they might be scat- 
 tered sheep no longer. If we would receive 
 the Gospel in its fulness, we must recognize 
 it as a message endowed with a twofold 
 significance, sent with a twofold purpose, 
 freighted with a twofold blessing. 
 
 Not that there are two Gospels — God 
 forbid ! St. Paul would have his Galatians 
 hold accursed even the angel who shall dare 
 to preach to them a second Gospel. But this 
 single Gospel has a twofold outlook ; in the 
 one direction it fronts upon the individual, 
 in the other it fronts upon society. 1 
 
 Every man that breathes has his own 
 personal need of pardon at God's hands. 
 
 1 The Schoolmen wisely recognized this distinction in 
 their theory of " The Seven Sacraments." Two of the seven, 
 namely, Matrimony and Orders, were held to confer grace on 
 society, as the other five conferred it on the individual. 
 It cannot be denied that a profound truth is latent here. See 
 Bishop Hampden's The Scholastic Philosophy, Bampton Lec- 
 tures for 1832, p. 313. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 13 
 
 The Gospel meets him with its promise of 
 forgiveness. Again, the great family of 
 men, as a family, asks to be reconciled and 
 set in order. The Gospel meets this want 
 with its announcement of a Kingdom organ- 
 ized upon the principle of holiness. 
 
 " The Gospel " ought to be regarded as 
 the entire blessing resulting to the world 
 from the birth, life, death, resurrection, and 
 ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this 
 aggregate of blessing, the interests both of the 
 one and of the many have a place. It is an 
 injury to the balance of truth when either 
 aspect is dwelt upon to the exclusion of the 
 other. Many a weary estrangement in re- 
 ligion owes its origin to this mistake. If, in 
 a rough way, we define the error of Roman- 
 ism to be an overestimate of the value of 
 organized Christianity, we ought also to admit 
 that the error of Protestantism has lain in an 
 underestimate of the same. The one the- 
 ology tends to sacrifice the individual to the 
 Church ; the other tends to sacrifice the 
 Church to the individual. 
 
 But we shall come to " the Roman Ques- 
 tion " by and by. At present we are con- 
 cerned with the abstract Church-Idea, and in 
 determining whether it has, or has not, any 
 intimate relation with the Gospel of Christ. 
 
14 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 A glance at the very first instance in which 
 the word " Gospel" occurs in the New Tes- 
 tament will give us light upon this point. 
 The Evangelist St. Matthew tells us, in one 
 of his earlier chapters, that as soon as our 
 Lord's ministry was fairly begun, He " went 
 about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, 
 and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom." 1 
 Now we know what " Gospel " means, and 
 we know what " Kingdom " means. Gospel 
 is good news. A kingdom is one of the 
 familiar forms of organized society. When, 
 therefore, we are told that Jesus preached 
 " the Gospel of the Kingdom," the natural 
 and straightforward inference from the state- 
 ment would seem to be that He announced 
 to the people the coming of a new and better 
 social order. It will be remembered that 
 this had been the key-note also of the Bap- 
 tist's cry in the desert. He had bidden men 
 repent and be ready, because there was a 
 kingdom close at hand. When the King 
 came, His first utterance was but the ampli- 
 fication of what His harbinger had said. He 
 also preached " the Gospel of the Kingdom." 
 
 But we are not left wholly to our own 
 devices in searching out the meaning of this 
 
 i Matt. iv. 23. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 15 
 
 phrase. We have even better evidence than 
 that of the ordinary laws of language. The 
 discourses spoken in those Galilean synagogues 
 and elsewhere on mountain, lake, &nd plain, 
 are largely preserved to us. In sermon and 
 parable we have the outline of the new 
 Kingdom sketched, and so sketched as to 
 persuade us that it is meant to be a thing 
 very tangible and real. The impression 
 given is that of a new society about to be 
 established here on earth, a regenerate social 
 order that shall dwell within the older order, 
 while yet wholly independent of it, the one 
 community bearing to the other the relation 
 that the embryo butterfly sustains to the 
 larva it inhabits. There is to be brought in 
 among the kingdoms of this w T orld a Divine 
 polity fruitful of change and sure of triumph ; 
 a polity that shall fulfill the promise of the 
 Magnificat, putting down the mighty from 
 their seats, exalting them of low degree ; fill- 
 ing the hungry with good things, and send- 
 ing the rich empty away. 
 
 But how does all this square with the or- 
 dinary definitions of " the Gospel ? " To the 
 question, What is the Gospel ? the usual an- 
 swer would be something like this : " The 
 Gospel is the blessed promise of pardon 
 
16 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 through the blood of Christ. It is the assur- 
 ance that for me the Saviour died." A true 
 answer, doubtless ; but is it the whole truth ? 
 Can it be the whole truth ? Is this the Gos- 
 pel that was preached by Jesus Christ in His 
 own person? 
 
 Manifestly if the benefits of Christ's death 
 were preached by Him while He was yet 
 treading the soil of Palestine and before He 
 suffered, they must have been preached pro- 
 phetically. But do we find this to have 
 been the case ? Do we discover in His re- 
 corded discourses very plentiful allusions to 
 the Preacher's coming sacrifice of Himself? 
 We certainly do find mysterious hints of 
 what is to be wrought upon the Cross. Cal- 
 vary looms heavily as we approach the close 
 of the Gospel story. But do we find in the 
 reported sayings of our Lord anything like 
 the same prominence given to the distinctive 
 doctrine of His sacrificial death that we find 
 in the writings of the Apostles ? Waiving 
 for the moment those intimations and fore- 
 shado wings of a truth more fully to be re- 
 vealed, do we discover among the words of 
 Jesus any such plain, direct statement as 
 this, for example, " The blood of Jesus Christ, 
 His Son, cleanseth us from all sin?" No 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 17 
 
 one, whatever his theological bias, will assert 
 that we do. And yet " the Gospel " was 
 preached even while 
 
 <; The Word had flesh, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds." 
 
 The Gospel was preached then, for we are 
 expressly told that it was, and it was Jesus 
 Christ Himself who preached it. He, if any 
 one, must have known what the Gospel 
 meant. And how did He preach the Gos- 
 pel ? The Evangelists tell us. Their record 
 makes it plain, that, from the beginning of 
 His preaching and teaching, Jesus presented 
 His Gospel in the twofold aspect that has 
 been claimed for it. He taught the duty of 
 personal allegiance to Himself. " Follow 
 me," He said. That was the side of the Gos- 
 pel that fronted on the individual. Again, 
 He spoke repeatedly to His disciples of " the 
 things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." 
 That was the side of the Gospel that fronted 
 upon society. 
 
 It is to be observed that neither one of 
 these two bearings was clearly discerned 
 until after the Saviour's death. It was only 
 when Pentecost had completed the cycle of 
 the redemptive work that the " salvation 
 which, at the first, began to be spoken by the 
 Lord " could be either taught or received in 
 
18 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 its completeness. 1 The death and resurrection 
 of the Gospel -bringer threw a flood of light 
 upon what He had said about His kingly 
 claims. Men began to see why so large a 
 measure of personal loyalty was demanded of 
 them, when they were shown how He who 
 asked it had died to take away their sin. 
 And they began to understand what was 
 meant by the Gospel of a Kingdom, when 
 they saw rising everywhere about them the 
 walls and turrets of the new-founded City of 
 God. 
 
 It will be seen that the writer's view iden- 
 tifies "the Kingdom" with the institution 
 known in history as the Christian Church. 
 
 Against such an identification of the King- 
 dom with the Church, two arguments may 
 be brought. The tw T o are independent of 
 each other, and, to a certain extent, in con- 
 flict ; but since each has found distinguished, 
 as well as numerous upholders, it will be 
 worth our while to examine them with care- 
 fulness. 
 
 The first of these two negative arguments 
 may be compactly stated thus : Christ's King- 
 dom means His spiritual supremacy in the 
 hearts of His several followers. It is not, 
 
 !See Bernard's Progress of Doctrine in Hie New Testament. 
 Chap. vii. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 19 
 
 and its Founder never intended it to be, a 
 visible organization. The second is this : 
 Christ's Kingdom means that coming down 
 of the heavenly Jerusalem to earth, which 
 we are to look for when the present order 
 of the world passes away. 
 
 Of these arguments, the first supposes 
 that the Kingdom has been already started 
 in the world, but is invisible ; the second 
 holds that the Kingdom will be visible when 
 it comes, but that it has not yet come. 
 There is truth in both views. There is 
 Scripture in support of both. Their error 
 lies in their one-sidedness. The larger doc- 
 trine that is to include both must set forth 
 a Kingdom at once visible and invisible, 
 present and future. 
 
 Let us first look at the argument for invisi- 
 bility. It is undeniable *that the phrase 
 "Kingdom of Heaven," or "Kingdom of 
 God," admits of a subjective as well as an 
 objective interpretation. Christ Himself says, 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," 
 and this word of His has been the main reli- 
 ance of the "invisible" hypothesis. But, 
 when we think of it, every kingdom is, in one 
 sense, u within " men. The essence of a king- 
 dom does not lie in thrones, and crowns, and 
 
20 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 sceptres, and palaces, but in the king's con- 
 sciousness of rightful authority, and in the 
 people's consciousness of an obligation to 
 obey. The true kingdom is " within " the 
 subjects' hearts. And yet, for all this, king- 
 doms, as we know them, are very real and 
 visible things. Granting that Christ meant 
 His Kingdom to be inward, does it follow 
 that He did not mean it to be outward also ? 
 In such a discussion, the burden of proof 
 rests upon those who deny the outward- 
 ness or visibility, not upon those who af- 
 firm it. 
 
 The Apostles are commonly believed to 
 have known the mind of Christ as well, at 
 least, as most modern theologians, and they 
 certainly could not, after Pentecost, be called 
 unspiritual men ; yet these Apostles went 
 forth from their -forty days of intercourse 
 with the risen Lord, and built up all over 
 the world a society as visible and tangible 
 as it well could be. This society had its 
 terms of membership, its officers, its laws, its 
 sacramental observances, its rites and usages. 
 Loner before the books of the New Testament 
 had been gathered into a volume, the exist- 
 ence of this society was as real and evident 
 to the eyes of men as that of the Roman 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 21 
 
 Empire itself. There was nothing shadowy 
 or uncertain about it. It was actual. It had 
 a name. That name was The Church. 
 This point will be more fully brought out in 
 another paper ; just now it is merely noted 
 as a formidable fact in the way of those who 
 would disprove Christ's intention of founding 
 a visible Kingdom. 
 
 The parables of our Lord hold a very 
 interesting relation to this question. They 
 are almost all of them concerned with the 
 nature of the Kingdom of Heaven ; and it is 
 a significant fact, that while some of them 
 are most readily interpreted of that Kingdom 
 which is " within," and some of that which 
 is u without," there are yet others that admit 
 with equal ease of either interpretation. 
 
 Every student of the parables must have 
 noticed this. Indeed, it is but another illus- 
 tration of that law of duality which, as w T e 
 have seen, runs through the whole system 
 of revelation. The very fact that these 
 symbolic sayings are illustrative of the Gos- 
 pel, causes them to partake of the Gospel's 
 twofold character. Take, for example, the 
 Parable of the Mustard Seed. We may 
 understand it of God's truth sown in the 
 heart of the believer and growing up into 
 
22 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 what we call ripe character, a tree beautiful 
 in foliage and vocal with the song of birds. 
 Or we may understand it of the seed of the 
 new social order sown in the world, and 
 springing up into a tree whose branches 
 reach out over all lands, and whose top 
 touches the sky. Either interpretation is 
 beautiful, and probably both were intended. 
 
 The old philosophers were fond of calling 
 man a microcosm, or little world in himself. 
 So the Christian may be a little Kingdom' of 
 Heaven in himself. But as the microcosm 
 does not exclude the macrocosm, the little 
 world and the great world being admirably 
 adjusted to each other, so neither does this 
 double aspect of the parables at all impair 
 their meaning. 
 
 The variety of limestone known as calc- 
 spar crystallizes in the rhombohedral form. 
 It is a peculiarity of this mineral that if you 
 shatter a crystal of it by a blow of the ham- 
 mer, each little fragment will be found to be 
 a perfect rhombohedron in miniature. All 
 that was true geometrically of the planes and 
 axes and angles of the large crystal, is also 
 true of the planes and axes and angles of 
 the tiny one. The same scientific formula 
 that described the unbroken mineral an- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 23 
 
 swers equally well for any fractured part. 
 The only difference is in respect of magnitude. 
 Let us interpret this parable of stone. It 
 shows us that a law of spiritual proportion 
 may be applicable to the individual man, 
 and yet not for this reason inapplicable to 
 the "colossal man," society. It indicates 
 also what is the right answer to those who 
 would oppose the spirituality of the Kingdom 
 to its visibility, namely, this: the Kingdom 
 was meant to be both spiritual and visible, 
 internal and external ; a Kingdom within the 
 soul, and yet a Kingdom into which both 
 soul and body have the power to come. 
 
 There remains the argument of futurity, 
 as it may be called. Did Christ, in all that 
 He said about the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 intend to be understood as speaking of that 
 perfected social state which is to ensue upon 
 His coming again ? In a word, did He mean 
 the heavenly state itself, that which we look 
 forward to when we pray, " Thy Kingdom 
 come ? " 
 
 Again let us resort to the parables. Two 
 of the most familiar of them can settle this 
 point in a moment. The Kingdom of 
 Heaven, Jesus tells us, is like a net cast into 
 the sea, that gathers of every kind, good and 
 
24 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 bad. And yet of the heavenly city of the 
 future, that perfectly pure and holy city, we 
 are told that there cannot enter into it any- 
 thing that defileth, worketh abomination, or 
 maketh a lie. In another place the Kingdom 
 of Heaven is likened to a field of wheat in 
 which an enemy sows tares. The wheat and 
 tares grow together until the harvest. And 
 when is the harvest ? The harvest is " the 
 end of the world." Clearly, then, the King- 
 dom of Heaven, as Christ uses the words, 
 must be something that begins long before 
 the world ends ; otherwise how can it possi- 
 bly be like a field in which wheat and tares 
 grow together until the harvest? 
 
 The right way out of the difficulty seems 
 to be this. "When our Lord spoke of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, He had in mind a King- 
 dom He meant to establish at once here on 
 earth, but a Kingdom, nevertheless, which 
 should find its fullest and ripest develop- 
 ment in the world to come. He was to lay 
 the foundations in time, of a building whose 
 battlements and spires were to mount up 
 into eternity. If this was indeed His pur- 
 pose, then it is certainly an unwise spirituality 
 that allows itself to speak slightingly of 
 organized Christianity as the " mere visible 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 25 
 
 Church." Thus contemptuously to set aside 
 the Church-Idea as being no part of the 
 true Gospel of Christ, but only an accidental, 
 perhaps dangerous appendage, is virtually to 
 make ourselves wiser than our Lord Himself. 
 Let us beware of endeavoring to be more 
 spiritual than He whose gift the Spirit is. 
 
 We are sometimes warned of the great 
 peril of putting the Church before Christ, or 
 in the place of Christ. If by putting the 
 Church before Christ be meant the worship- 
 ping of forms and ceremonies, instead of the 
 worshipping of Almighty God, the caution 
 is not amiss. But if it be meant that the 
 Gospel of the Kingdom really interferes with 
 or obscures the Gospel of the Cross, then 
 the warning, however well meant, is a 
 mistaken one. The New Testament couples 
 together the two thoughts, " Christ and the 
 Church." To this agrees St. Paul. He 
 confesses that the mystery is great ; " but," 
 he adds, " I speak concerning Christ and the 
 Church." To this agrees St. John : « The 
 Spirit and the Bride say, Come." The 
 Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. The Bride is 
 the Church. In those high and mystic 
 nuptials of which the Apostle speaks, the 
 invisible and the visible are wedded. What 
 
26 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 are we, that we should strive to have it other- 
 wise ? ; * Those whom God hath joined to- 
 gether, let no man put asunder/ 3 
 
 Thus far we have been busy with deter- 
 mining the single point whether our Lord 
 Jesus Christ did, or did not mean that there 
 should be built up in the world, after His 
 departure, a visible and organized society 
 bearing His name. Our next step will be 
 to mark the manner in which the creative 
 thought took shape and body in the hands 
 of those who received it directly from the 
 Founder. 
 
 We shall then review successively the three 
 principal misapprehensions to which, in the 
 progress of human history, the original 
 thought has been subject ; namely, — 
 
 Romanism, or the Exaggeration of the 
 
 J CO 
 
 Divine Idea ; 
 
 Puritanism, or the Diminution of the 
 Divine Idea ; 
 
 Liberalism, or the Distortion of the Divine 
 Idea. 
 
 Lastly, we shall confront the difficult prob- 
 lem how in this strange new America of 
 ours, good Christian people who sympathize 
 fully with neither Romanism, Puritanism, 
 nor Liberalism, but who desire to give each 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 27 
 
 one of these its just due, may best be loyal 
 to the Divine Idea. 
 
 Let no one say that the inquiry is an idle 
 one. Leastwise let no Christian man or 
 woman say so. 
 
 For an unbeliever to boast, " The Church 
 is nothing to me," is natural enough. But 
 a believer has no right to use this flippant 
 tone. In him indifference is blameworthy. 
 He is as much bound to feel solicitude for 
 the well-being of the Church, as the good 
 citizen is bound to care for the prosperity of 
 the State. For a Christian to declare that 
 his whole religion consists in watering and 
 weeding his own spiritual garden-plot, and 
 that he has no time to look beyond the hedge, 
 is blank selfishness. We call the man who 
 acknowledges no obligation to the community 
 in which he lives, a churl. The Church is 
 the commonwealth of souls, and every 
 Christian owes it fealty and service. 
 
 In following out the plan thus sketched, 
 it will be the writer's aim to use perfectly 
 explicit language so as to avoid being mis- 
 understood. If at any time this plainness 
 of speech should seem to the reader too plain, 
 let him be assured that there is no intention 
 of unkindness or discourtesy. The single 
 
28 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 purpose of these papers is to promote recon- 
 ciliation and peace, a purpose which any 
 least tinge of bitterness would thwart. But 
 unity is to be sought through the truth ; and 
 if we would reach the truth every man must 
 say out honestly just what he thinks. When, 
 therefore, in the course of our inquiry, dif- 
 ferent systems of religion are freely criticised 
 it will be understood that this is due to no 
 inability or unwillingness to appreciate what 
 is good in them, but is only the fruit of an 
 honest desire to get at the truth. 
 
 Any other method would be at once feeble 
 and unsatisfactory. To say nothing directly, 
 and to leave everything to inference, may 
 be an inoffensive, as it certainly is a safe way 
 of expressing thought. But what the most 
 charitable of men has called " sound speech 
 that cannot be condemned," is speech of an- 
 other sort. It can only mean such utterance 
 as is straightforward, intelligible, and to the 
 point. 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 29 
 
 II. 
 
 THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 
 
 Life, of whatever sort it is, looks for a 
 lodgment in organization. Perhaps the re- 
 mark ought to be limited to life as we know 
 it upon this planet. What the vital conditions 
 may be elsewhere, we cannot tell. Here, 
 certainly, life is forever taking on shapes 
 that are at once its clothing and its expres- 
 sion. 
 
 Vegetable life finds its organization in roots 
 and stalks, leaves and branches, plants and 
 trees. Animal life breathes itself into flesh 
 and bones, and seeks a dwelling in the bodies 
 of all moving creatures, in birds, beasts, and 
 men. There is yet a higher kind of life 
 than either the vegetable or the animal. 
 We call it spiritual life, the life that differ- 
 ences man from the brute. 
 
 Now where and how does this spiritual 
 life find organization ? In a partial and mea- 
 gre way the question is answered whenever 
 spirit and flesh are welded together in one 
 
'30 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 living man. But this embodiment is of ne- 
 cessity incomplete. It is the incarnation of 
 a spirit, rather than of spirit. We must look 
 for an ampler tabernacle than the human 
 frame, and we find it in that large and com- 
 plicated body, society. This is the law that 
 binds men together in communities, girding 
 the earth with a chain armor of families, 
 each link nearly or distantly connected with 
 every other link. The individual is con- 
 scious of incompleteness, and seeks instinct- 
 ively, by joining himself to others of his 
 kind, to realize that " fulness " which really 
 can be gathered up in no one person save 
 the Word made flesh. This, then, is the 
 rationale of the Gospel of the Kingdom. 
 This is the marrow of the Church-Idea. 
 Because there has always been spiritual life 
 in the world, therefore there has always been 
 society. Because it is possible for the spirit 
 of man to live either with God or apart from 
 Him, therefore there has always been an 
 inner or elect society, — the Church. Be- 
 cause Jesus Christ brought into the world 
 a vast access of spiritual life, therefore the 
 new society of the elect in which this life 
 has found embodiment is called, in distinc- 
 tion from the national election it displaced, 
 the Catholic or Universal Church. 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 31 
 
 Now it is one thing to admit the truth of 
 abstract statements like these, and quite an- 
 other to discern their true bearing on the 
 history of the past, and the needs of the 
 present. We have undertaken to study the 
 Divine idea of the Church, but the attempt 
 is hopeless without the aid of some sort of 
 illustration. 
 
 Moreover, we want an illustration that 
 shall carry with it the weight of authority. 
 A man is at liberty' to pick and choose illus- 
 trations when he is setting forth his own 
 thoughts ; but when he undertakes to inter- 
 pret a revealed thought of God, we demand 
 that he employ similitudes stamped with the 
 sanction of the Revealer. 
 
 Our Lord provided for this necessity very 
 fully when He promulgated His Gospel of 
 the Kingdom. He knew well that men 
 would never catch His idea unless He put 
 it into pictures, and wrote His own Fecit on 
 the canvas. Both He and His Apostles 
 after Him took pains, therefore, to employ 
 very striking comparisons as a means of ex- 
 pounding the nature of the new society. 
 Some of these comparisons illustrate one as- 
 pect of the Divine idea, others another aspect. 
 
 Thus the Church is likened in the New 
 
32 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Testament to a field of wheat, to a fisher's 
 net, to a vineyard, to a kingdom, to a ship, 
 to a sheep-fold, to a family, to a bride, to a 
 tree springing from a seed, to the human 
 body. Of all these various similitudes, the 
 last is richest in suggestion. Nothing in 
 Nature is so marvelously wrought as the 
 house that man inhabits, and it is no wonder 
 we find it the best symbol of that Divine 
 society whose Head is Christ, and whose 
 many members are destined to constitute at 
 last w; the perfect man." 
 
 Besides, this illustration of the body falls 
 in admirably with our present purpose, which 
 is to ascertain in what way the Divine thought 
 as it came from the mind of Christ took on, 
 at the hands of His immediate successors, 
 the clothing of actual fact. The Apostle 
 with whose activity in missionary labor we 
 are best acquainted, was the same whose eye 
 seems to have caught most readily the re- 
 semblance between the body and the Church. 
 We are likely to find, therefore, that the 
 analogy is as rich in practical suggestions as 
 it is useful in the interpretation of ideal truth. 
 Let us see. 
 
 The first and most obvious attribute of a 
 body is visibility. Undoubtedly there are 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 33 
 
 bodies that we cannot see, — microscopic 
 bodies, for example, and ethereal bodies too 
 subtile for our vision ; but when we speak 
 of such bodies as invisible, we really only 
 mean that we have not the eyes to see 
 them. Letting alone such fine-spun distinc- 
 tions as this, the remark is perfectly true that 
 the most obvious attribute of a body is 
 visibility. It is, indeed, this very visibility 
 that, in the common judgment of men, 
 distinguishes body from spirit. Spirit is some- 
 thing that cannot be seen ; body is something 
 that can be seen. When the disciples after 
 the resurrection were frightened because they 
 thought they had seen a spirit, Jesus, while 
 He reassured them, gently reproved their 
 error of judgment. " Why are ye troubled ? 
 Behold my hands and my feet that it is I 
 myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit 
 hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 1 
 Here sight is made, by the highest authority, 
 the criterion of the body's reality. " Handle 
 me and see." It is a true body, because it 
 is a visible one. 
 
 If, then, the Church is a body, in any real 
 and satisfactory sense, the Church must be a 
 society that is visible, open to the eye. And 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 39. 
 3 
 
34 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 what is a visible society ? It is any union of 
 men that confesses itself a union by having 
 terms of admission and symbols of member- 
 ship. The societies called u secret " are just 
 as visible as any others, so far as the evidence 
 of their existence goes. The nearest ap- 
 proach to an invisible society, if the very 
 coupling of the two words does not involve a 
 contradiction, is in the case of men banding 
 together for the attainment of some object, 
 and agreeing solemnly that their relation to 
 each other shall not be indicated by any out- 
 ward sign or token whatsoever. But we 
 have a distinct name for such a union as this. 
 We call it a conspiracy, or mingling of 
 breaths. Yet even a breath upon a cold day 
 takes form and shape such as the eye can 
 see. So hard is it to disconnect the idea of 
 visibility from the idea of a society. 
 
 Why, then, do we hear so much in these 
 days about " the Church Invisible ? " There 
 certainly is no warrant for the phrase in Holy 
 Scripture. Nowhere in the Word of God, 
 from the first page of it to the last, is there 
 any mention of a Church Invisible, save of 
 that which is only invisible because it is in 
 heaven, not on earth. We must remember 
 that there is a difference between " things 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 35 
 
 not seen " and things that cannot be seen. 
 The heavenly Church is among the things 
 not seen as yet, but this is not because it is a 
 Church Invisible by nature. It can be seen, 
 and will be seen, even as in vision it has been 
 seen. Here is the picture of it. " After 
 this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, 
 which no man could number, of all nations, 
 and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood 
 before the throne, and before the Lamb, 
 clothed with white robes, and palms in their 
 hands ; and cried with a loud voice, saying, 
 Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the 
 throne, and unto the Lamb." x This is indeed 
 a Church to us invisible, and it is the onlv 
 " Church Invisible 4 " of which the Scriptures 
 speak. 
 
 In the previous paper the argument against 
 the theory of invisibility was rested upon the 
 words of Christ Himself, and the question 
 of His intention was made the central point. 
 A glance at the actual practice of the men 
 who were commissioned by Christ to carry 
 out His plan, will show whether the inference 
 there drawn from the language of the King 
 finds warrant in the acts of His lieutenants. 
 
 Let us see what was St. Paul's notion of 
 
 i Rev. vii. 9. 
 
36 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 
 
 edifying or building up that Body of Christ 
 of which he said so much. 
 
 The Apostle goes into a certain city of 
 Asia Minor, or Macedonia, or the Greek 
 Peninsula, and he preaches there the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ. The soil is an outworn and 
 unpromising one, but into it he bravely casts 
 the seed. What follows ? Some of the in- 
 habitants of that city repent and believe. 
 What follows next ? The Apostle satisfies 
 himself of the genuineness of their repent- 
 ance and faith, and he then receives those 
 persons and their households into the circle 
 of the Kingdom, the Fold of the Church, the 
 Body of Christ. How does he do this ? He 
 does it by that sacrament of Holy Baptism 
 which the Lord Himself ordained as the 
 door of entrance to the new society. They 
 become regenerate, or new-born into the 
 family of God. 
 
 The Apostle goes away. His missionary 
 errand carries him to some far-off city of the 
 Mediterranean. Presently he learns, either 
 by some chance comer or by a special mes- 
 senger, that all is not going on well in that 
 city w T here he planted the Kingdom, and left 
 it to be cared for at the hands of others. 
 There has been a falling away from the 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS OLOTHING. 37 
 
 faith, or dissensions have sprung up, or gross 
 sins have crept in and defiled the flock, so 
 that purity of life, as well as of faith, is put 
 in peril. What does the Apostle now ? He 
 takes his pen, or he bids some fellow-mis- 
 sionary take the pen for him, and he writes 
 a letter of counsel to those far-off* Christians, 
 telling them how sadly grieved he is to learn 
 that anything has gone wrong, and pointing 
 out in what way all may be set right again. 
 But how does he address this letter ? Pause 
 a moment. How should we expect him to ad- 
 dress it, according to the " invisible Church " 
 theory? Should we not look to find him 
 drawing a sharp line of distinction at the 
 very outset between those in the Church 
 who had come up to his expectations, and 
 those who had not ? Should we not expect 
 him to state explicitly that he regards those 
 who have been in fault as no Christians at 
 all? Ought he not to tell these last that 
 their baptism was a nullity, that events have 
 proved the sacrament to have been in their 
 case an empty form, and bid them reflect 
 that their membership of the " mere visible 
 Church " avails them nothing ? 
 
 This is what we might very naturally ex- 
 pect. But do we, in point of fact, find the 
 
38 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Apostle taking this line ? We know that 
 the Christians of Corinth were, at one time, 
 fallen into much such a state as has been 
 pictured. St. Paul wrote to them. What 
 was his address ? " Paul, called to be an 
 Apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will 
 of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the 
 Church of God which is at Corinth, to them 
 that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to 
 be saints, .... grace be unto you 
 and peace." 1 The whole spirit of the letter 
 is in harmony with this beginning. The 
 Corinthian Christians, one and all, are dealt 
 with throughout as those who had been 
 sanctified, set apart to be holy, made mem- 
 bers of the Body of Christ. The appeal to 
 those of them who have gone astray, is made 
 to rest upon this very fact that they do be- 
 long, in virtue of their baptism, to the sacred 
 Body of the Lord, and that they ought to be 
 deeply penitent for having defiled that Body. 
 " As many of you as have been baptized 
 into Christ have put on Christ ; " this is the 
 promise that underlies all his reasoning, the 
 solemn reminder that gives weight to his 
 every rebuke. Even when he is expostulat- 
 ing with the offenders themselves, his argu- 
 
 i 1 Cor. i. 1. 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 39 
 
 ment is that they are defiling the temple of 
 God, " which temple," he significantly adds, 
 "ye are." Does this look as if St. Paul had 
 always in mind two Churches, an outer and 
 an inner, a visible and an invisible, a husk 
 and a kernel ? Does it not rather look as if 
 he regarded the whole body of the baptized 
 as being the one Church of Christ on earth, 
 a Church not without its unworthy and sickly 
 members, even as the Lord had said should 
 be, but still one Church, to be addressed as 
 brethren, to be taught, to be guided, to be 
 built up, to be ministered unto, to be led on 
 in holy living, and, at last, to be judged, 
 not by him, Paul, but by that One who is 
 ordained to judge both them and him ? 
 
 The mention just now made of the temple 
 suggests a second point in the analogy be- 
 tween the Church and the living human body. 
 What is it that gives honor to this complicated 
 organism of flesh, and blood, and bones, and 
 nerves, and muscles we call " the body ? " 
 It is the solemn fact that the body is the ap- 
 pointed dwelling-place of a spirit. So long- 
 as it can claim this august tenant as its own, 
 the body has dignity ; but no sooner is the 
 spirit fled from out it than the body begins 
 to return into the crude and worthless ele- 
 
40 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 ments of which it is built up. Beauty and 
 power alike forsake it. Only dust remains. 
 
 Now what is it that makes the new society 
 whose nature we are exploring worthy of the 
 high and glorious titles given to it in Scrip- 
 ture ? Doubtless it is the indwelling in this 
 Body also of a Spirit. And what Spirit ? 
 God the Holy Ghost. Here lies the distinc- 
 tion between the Church and any other 
 society whatsoever. The Church has the 
 promise of its Divine Founder that He will 
 be in it always. 
 
 And only consider what the presence of a 
 spirit in a body involves. It is a most mar- 
 velous thing, this connection between our- 
 selves and the temporary home in which we 
 think and feel. The wit of man can formu- 
 late the law that keeps the stars in their 
 courses, but of the law that links body to 
 soul, it tells us almost absolutely nothing. 
 We can philosophize upon that mysterious 
 union, and invent all manner of hard names 
 to describe it, but we get no nearer to under- 
 standing it by doing so. All that we really 
 know about it is that it exists, and that it 
 answers the purpose of making the body the 
 servant and instrument of the soul. Thus, 
 for example, you wish to express a thought 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 41 
 
 in writing. Your will determines that your 
 hand shall take the pen, dip it in ink, put it 
 on the paper, form the words. But how did 
 the mandate, which \vas a spiritual thing, 
 find its way to the muscles of your hand ? 
 And when it had reached them, how did it 
 compel obedience ? You answer, " By the 
 power of volition." Yes, but are you any 
 nearer to understanding the thing, because 
 you have the phrase that describes it at your 
 tongue's end? Not one whit. 
 
 And if we cannot understand how the 
 spirit impels the body to action, neither do 
 we know any better why it is that an injury 
 done to the body brings grief and anguish to 
 the spirit. By what strange electricity the 
 nerves of feeling are empowered to carry to 
 the soul their nimble messages of warning, 
 and, as it were, bring down the spirit to the 
 suffering part, who can comprehend ? We 
 only know that thus it is. The ancients used 
 to say, The soul is all in every part. We 
 moderns have not got beyond the paradox. 
 
 It is impossible to appreciate the wealth 
 of St. Paul's illustration unless we take into 
 account this omnipresence of the spirit in the 
 body. Let the reader summon up to his 
 mind the image of a vast society of living 
 
42 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 men, all animated, actuated, and controlled 
 by one central spirit. Let him imagine that 
 spirit sending out commands to every remotest 
 point of the complex organism, just as a 
 human will telegraphs its orders to hand or 
 foot, to eye or lip. Let him imagine again 
 that spirit receiving intelligence from all these 
 various members, learning of their necessities, 
 knowing when they suffer, sorrowing, as it 
 were, with their sorrow, rejoicing in their 
 joy. " Now the Lord is that Spirit : " His 
 body is the Church. His going forth upon 
 the nerves of motion we call " grace.' ' Our 
 coming to Him upon the return nerves of 
 feeling we call " prayer." What a marvel- 
 ous similitude it is ! How can we enough 
 adore the wisdom that has thus made the 
 seen things the mirror of the unseen ; our 
 perishable and earthly frame the type of that 
 Body Mystical which is the dwelling-place 
 of Christ ! 
 
 A third important point in this analogy is 
 that which bears upon the question of the 
 Church's unity. That the Church ought to 
 be visibly, as well as spiritually one, is a 
 direct corollarv from the two truths alreadv 
 brought out. It is wonderful that even the 
 usages of common speech do not teach people 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 43 
 
 to see more clearly the connection between 
 life and unity. Thus, for instance, while a 
 man is living, we say that he is one person, 
 but after he is dead, we speak of his " re- 
 mains. '" Why this change of number from the 
 singular to the plural ? It is because a body, 
 taken by itself, suggests manifoldness of parts ; 
 and when the tenant whose presence brought 
 all things into unity has. fled, the characteristic 
 which was before subordinate, becomes con- 
 spicuous. Similarly we make " dissolution " 
 a synonym of death ; and what is dissolution 
 but a sundering into parts of that which before 
 was whole ? Are those who maintain that 
 the competition of sects makes the life of the 
 Church, aware that what they advocate is 
 really nothing less than the dissolution of the 
 Body of Christ ? Indeed, is it not something 
 worse than dissolution ? The demoniac who 
 had Legion for his guest would probably have 
 chosen death as a relief; and yet the only 
 way by which sectarianism can escape the 
 charge of crucifying the Lord afresh, is by 
 taking refuge in the idea of a Body multitudi- 
 nously possessed. An alternative more awful 
 it would be hard to name. 
 
 We are assured that there must be " diver- 
 sities of operation,' 1 and hence sects. By all 
 
44 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 means let us admit the first proposition. By 
 no means let us consent to the inference. Di- 
 versity is perfectly consistent with oneness ; 
 sectarianism not at all. Nature is running 
 over with variety, but it is a variety in unity, 
 a diversity that is absolutely obedient to law. 
 That the modern interpretation of the phrase 
 just quoted would have been wholly alien to 
 the mind of its author, is evident from the per- 
 emptory way in which we find him dealing 
 with the sectarian principle in his own times. 
 He does not seem to have regarded the Cephas 
 party and the Ap olios party as harmless " diver- 
 sities of operation," in which the Corinthian 
 Church might safely be indulged. On the con- 
 trary he did not hesitate to say that such divis- 
 ions savored more of worldliness than of god- 
 liness. No, this theory that the eye of the 
 Almighty discerns in sectarian Christianity a 
 harmony hidden from man's weaker vision is 
 but a poor make-shift at best. The definition 
 of unity that it implies is such a definition as 
 would not be admitted for a moment in connec- 
 tion with any of those forms of community-life 
 most familiar to us. Who, for instance, would 
 dream of organizing a commonwealth, an uni- 
 versity, an army, or a navy, upon this princi- 
 ple that outward and visible unity need not 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 45 
 
 be considered as particularly important ? 
 And if, the higher we rise in the develop- 
 ment of social life, the more we feel the need 
 of a perfect order, why should we imagine that 
 in the structure of the ideal community, the 
 Church, this point may be safely disregarded ? 
 
 But these are questions that properly belong 
 to a later stage of our inquiry. At present 
 they are only noted in their connection with 
 the argument from analogy. If the Church 
 be a living body, unity belongs to it of right. 
 
 One more resemblance. In every human 
 body that lives and breathes there goes for- 
 ward a process of ceaseless change. The 
 vital energies are constantly engaged in dis- 
 carding old material, and assimilating new. 
 The atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
 nitrogen, that have done their work, go on 
 their way to build up other bodies, and fresh 
 atoms come in to take their place. Physiolo- 
 gists have not decided what precise period of 
 time is required for an entire change of fleshly 
 clothing ; but that such a change does take 
 place many times over in the course of an 
 ordinary life, they are agreed. The identity 
 of a man's body is, therefore, something quite 
 different from that of a marble statue, 1 for it 
 
 1 Much confusion of thought with regard to the Christian 
 
46 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 is an identity that must, somehow, be con- 
 sistent with perpetual change. Now and 
 then there come crises 1 in the history of a 
 body. We call them diseases. They may 
 leave the man in a better condition than they 
 found him, or they may leave him in a worse. 
 They may alter his outward appearance for 
 the remainder of his life, or, again, they may 
 alter it only temporarily. In either case, and 
 in any case, a man's body, so long as he in- 
 habits it, remains his body still. 
 
 The bearing of these facts upon the phe- 
 nomena of Church life is important. We talk 
 about Reformations of the Church, and argue 
 whether they are desirable or not. Reforma- 
 tions ! Why, the whole life of the Church 
 ought to be- a continual Reformation, a con- 
 stant taking out of the way that which is 
 effete, and re-forming the tissue with new 
 material. Those who fancy that in order to 
 demonstrate the identity of the Church they 
 must import into the nineteenth century the 
 cultus of the thirteenth are under a delusion. 
 As well refuse to own your friend because his 
 
 doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body would be avoided, if 
 this distinction between two sorts of identity, — identity of 
 material and identity of growth, — were always kept in mind. 
 1 M. Comte was fond of speaking of his attacks of fever 
 under this name. 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 47 
 
 countenance at forty is not what it was at 
 twenty-five, as turn suspicious of the Church 
 of your fathers because it does not look to 
 you precisely as it looked to them. Provided 
 the historical continuity of the Church be 
 kept, and the original deposit of faith pre- 
 served intact, it matters not how many ref- 
 ormations are experienced. An unintermit- 
 ting reformation would be the best of all. 
 
 Thus we gather from this analogy of the 
 Body no less than four notes, or characteristics 
 of the perfect Church : — 
 
 1st. Visibility. 
 
 2d. The indwelling Spirit of the Lord. 
 
 3d. Unity. 
 
 4th. Capability of perpetual renewal. 
 
 But how has it fared with this Divine idea 
 in the actual history of the world ? This is a 
 question upon which we have yet to enter. 
 We must approach it prepared for some 
 measure of disappointment, and even of 
 mortification. 
 
 Every one is familiar w r ith the distinction 
 between an idea and its realization. A man 
 conceives some grand and noble thought, and 
 he attempts to give expression to it, but he 
 invariably fails. What we call works of art 
 are but the forms or shapes into which men 
 
48 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 
 
 have cast their various thoughts and imagin- 
 ings. The one word written upon them all 
 is Imperfection. 
 
 No matter what the work is, be it a picture, 
 a poem, a statue, a building, a machine, an ora- 
 torio, — the maker of it will be the first to ac- 
 knowledge, if he be an artist indeed, that that 
 which seems so perfect in the eyes of others, 
 does, in his own, fall short of what he can im- 
 agine. Between a high idea and man's embod- 
 iment of it there is always a great gulf fixed. 
 
 It is told of the famous Danish sculptor, 
 that in later life he was once found in his 
 studio laboring under deep dejection. He 
 gave it as the cause of his melancholy that he 
 had just completed a work that satisfied him. 
 " My powers must be on the decline," he 
 added, " when I find that I am contented 
 with anything that I accomplish." This 
 must always be the confession of honest 
 human endeavor. Our best achievements 
 lag behind our visions of what might be. 
 
 The history of the Church of Christ is but 
 the record of a long and painful effort to 
 clothe in actual fact the Divine idea of a 
 heavenly kingdom upon earth. But in this, 
 as in all else with which man has to do, the 
 result has been lamentably imperfect. 
 
THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 49 
 
 Is it objected that such an admission is in- 
 consistent with what has been said about the 
 Divine origin of the Church-Idea ? Not at all. 
 The Divine thought, it is true, must be per- 
 fect for the very reason that it is Divine. But 
 the working out of the thought has been left 
 to a great degree, in the hands of men. Part 
 of the purpose was that in this building of the 
 Temple we should be " laborers together with 
 God." God's share in the work has indeed 
 been perfect ; ours very far from perfect. 
 This is why it was said that we should find 
 cause for mortification ; for is anything more 
 mortifying, when we have the picture of what 
 might be, and of what was meant to be, before 
 our eyes, than to observe in what a sad and 
 terrible way human willfulness, and human 
 pride, and human enmity, have marred and 
 disfigured in the fulfilment the fair beauty of 
 the promise ? 
 
 And yet, along with our mortification, we 
 shall feel gratitude and joy, if we discover 
 that, after all, the lines of the original painting 
 are still traceable upon the stained and torn 
 canvas, and that underneath the incrustations 
 of long ages there lies the pure and perfect 
 outline of the Mystical Body of the Lord. 
 4 
 
50 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 III. 
 
 ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 1 
 
 In one of his latest addresses to the pilgrim 
 Israelites, Moses made a point of warning 
 them against the temptation to tamper with 
 the Law they had received. " Ye shall not 
 add," he said, u unto the word that I com- 
 mand you, neither shall ye diminish aught 
 from it." The people understood that their 
 Leader claimed this perfectness for his Law 
 solely on the ground of its having come from 
 God. Their acquiescence was but a con- 
 fession of the general truth that God's handi- 
 work cannot be bettered by man's skill. 
 Thus the precept covered a principle, and a 
 principle which is as true now as it was then. 
 A Revelation once given is susceptible of im- 
 provement at no hand save the Revealer's. 
 We may use our ingenuity in interpreting 
 and applying its contents ; but until it has 
 been superseded by a new revelation of par- 
 
 l The issues of the Council of the Vatican are so uncertain 
 that it is folly to attempt to forecast them. In the present 
 paper, therefore, the writer confines himself to the past, not 
 wishing to rest any portion of his argument upon conjectural 
 ground. Whatever Rome may now assert, there are some 
 things she cannot retract. It is with these irreversible steps 
 of hers, already taken, that the critical student is principally 
 concerned. 
 
ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 51 
 
 amount authority, our simple duty is to guard 
 it alike from increment and loss. 
 
 In the course of our inquiry into the true 
 nature of the Church of Christ, we have 
 reached a point where the application of this 
 principle is of the utmost importance. The 
 adherents of the religious system known as 
 Romanism claim for themselves that they, 
 and they alone of living men, are in com- 
 munion with the true Body Mystical of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. In their view, the Papal 
 Church is the Catholic Church ; and if the 
 Catholic Church, then the Church of the 
 Apostles ; and if the Church of the Apostles, 
 then the Church of Christ ; and if the Church 
 of Christ, then the City of God, the Kingdom 
 of Heaven upon earth, the Mother of us all. 
 
 Grant the first proposition, and the rest 
 follow. But is the first proposition true ? Do 
 the cause of the Papacy and the cause of 
 Catholicity indeed stand and fall together ? 
 Certainly not, if it can be shown that Rome 
 has overlaid with inventions of her own the 
 original constitution of the Kingdom, — has 
 so blotted the charter of our rights, that it is 
 hard for the unskilled eye to read the w T ords 
 as they were written. 
 
 But first let it be frankly admitted that 
 there is a great deal to give color to the claims 
 
52 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 of Rome both in the line of reasoning and 
 of observation. Starting from the " Tu es 
 Petrus " as her historical premise, and from 
 Christ's assurance that the Paraclete should 
 guide the Church into all truth as her theo- 
 logical premise, Rome weaves her argument 
 for authority out of a warp of realism and a 
 woof of idealism. It is an argument not to 
 be despised ; and those who hold a different 
 view of Catholicity are bound to show how 
 Rome's claims are to be met. 
 
 The late Archbishop Whately is said to 
 have once posed a whole tableful of his 
 clergy by taking up the defense of Romanism, 
 and calling on his guests to furnish counter- 
 arguments. They were finally compelled to 
 beseech him that he would confute himself. 
 The spectacle must have been as pitiable as 
 it was ludicrous. The men ought to have 
 been, as no doubt they were, heartily ashamed 
 of themselves. Had Archer Butler been at 
 the dinner, at least one Irish churchman would 
 have held his own against the Primate. 
 
 The helplessness of Protestant apologists 
 is often due to their having taken up an 
 entirely false and mistaken line of defense. 
 There are two ways of dealing with this 
 question of Romanism : one is the method 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 53 
 
 of denunciation, the other that of calm in- 
 quiry and impartial search. Every body- 
 knows that the first is the more usual 
 method. It is so for the simple reason that 
 denunciation is always easier, and sometimes 
 more effective, than argument. A zealous 
 Protestant can quickly gather an armful of 
 epithets from Daniel and the Apocalypse, and 
 shower them without mercy upon the whole 
 Roman communion. Thus we not seldom 
 hear the Pope called unhesitatingly Anti- 
 christ or the Man of Sin. The learning of 
 Roman Catholic theologians and the piety 
 of Roman Catholic devotees are spoken of 
 with similar contempt. The one is repre- 
 sented to be the mere offspring of credulity ; 
 the other, if it be not hypocrisy, is plainly the 
 base lust of reward. Whatever looks like 
 goodness in a Romanist is, we are assured, 
 nothing more than a spurious imitation of 
 the reality. No holiness is genuine that is 
 not also Protestant. This method of com- 
 bating the errors of Romanism may perhaps 
 be justified by the law of retaliation, for Rome 
 herself has not been sparing of her curses, 
 but it certainly cannot be justified by the law 
 of love. As disciples of Him who bade His 
 followers bless and curse not, let us aim at 
 
54 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 the more excellent way. A sentence to carry 
 weight need not be rounded with an anath- 
 ema, nor can a weak argument ever be but- 
 tressed with hard words. 
 
 Besides, there is a special reason why the 
 popular war-cries of " intolerance," "bigo- 
 try," "priestcraft," "ambition," and the 
 like should be avoided. These wholesale 
 charges are as dangerous as they are vague ; 
 double-edged swords, they may be made to 
 cut both ways. No doubt Romanism, in the 
 day of her power, was fiercely intolerant. But 
 has Protestantism, in her day, never been in- 
 tolerant ? We need not go beyond the limits 
 of New England for an answer. The truth 
 is, majorities are almost always intolerant. 
 Romanists, in this matter, are only like other 
 men. When they are w T eak, they advocate 
 tolerance. When they are strong, they are 
 tempted to intolerance. And so with the 
 other charges of bigotry, priestcraft, and am- 
 bition. If individual Romanists are bigoted, 
 crafty, and ambitious, so are also individual 
 Protestants the same. And if individual 
 Protestants are large-hearted, honest, and of 
 lowly mind, so are also individual Romanists 
 the same. 
 
 You draw your dark picture of the bigot, of 
 
KOMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 55 
 
 Alva, of Loyola, of Pole. The Romanist con- 
 fronts you with F^nelon, with Pascal, with 
 Montalembert. You hold up some perfidious 
 Jesuit to contempt. The Romanist reminds 
 you of those heroic missionaries who were 
 among the first martyrs to Christ here in our 
 own America. You talk about ambition. 
 Your adversary points to the divisions among 
 Protestants, and asks tauntingly, Who are the 
 more ambitious, they who are ready to sac- 
 rifice their personal preferences to the com- 
 mon welfare, or they w T ho will rend the sacred 
 Body of Christ rather than not see their own 
 pet scheme triumphant ? 
 
 It is probably true that the tendency of 
 Romanism, as a system, is to beget and foster 
 intolerance, bigotry, priestcraft, and ambition. 
 The writer does not dispute the point ; but he 
 declines, in an inquiry like this, to press these 
 charges, for the simple reason that they are 
 such as may be bandied to and fro forever. 
 For the purposes of argument they are vague 
 and inconclusive as compared with the more 
 important accusation to which we are about 
 to turn. Passing them all by, therefore, let 
 us rest the argument against Rome upon the 
 simple fact that she has added to the faith. 
 This is the one charge from which that 
 
56 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Church has never cleared herself, the weighty 
 charge of having imposed upon the flock of 
 Christ both usages and doctrines of which the 
 Chief Shepherd never knew. That she has 
 been untrue to the pure Gospel that was of 
 old intrusted to the faithful, is her crime. 
 
 But how are we to ascertain what this pure 
 Gospel was ? That it had an existence is very 
 certain. Evidently, to the Apostles' thinking, 
 there could be no greater treason against 
 Christ than to supplement or alter the sacred 
 deposit left in the keeping of the Church, " the 
 faith once delivered to the saints." 
 
 The only trustworthy information we pos- 
 sess with regard to this original deposit comes 
 from the Christian Scriptures. Apart from all 
 arguments about inspiration, it is indisputable 
 that these waitings furnish the sole authentic 
 record of what Jesus Christ Himself said and 
 taught, and what the men who were under 
 His immediate guidance said and taught after 
 Him. Of course the oral teaching of the 
 Apostles preceded their written instructions, 
 and it is here that Rome brings in her plea 
 for tradition. But the best tradition can 
 scarcely be compared in value with documen- 
 tary evidence ; and when they are satisfied 
 that they have the latter, men care little for 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. & i 
 
 the former. Only in so far as the oral teach- 
 ing of the founders of the Church is embodied 
 in the book called the New Testament, do we 
 know with any certainty what it was. 
 
 Hence it was that the Church of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race planted herself, in the great 
 awakening of the sixteenth century, upon 
 this broad and settled principle that Holy 
 Scripture is the only perfectly trustworthy 
 depository of revealed truth. Here is her 
 authoritative language : " Holy Scripture con- 
 taineth all things necessary to salvation ; so 
 that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 
 be proved thereby, is not to be required of 
 any man that it should be believed as an 
 article of the faith, or be thought requisite 
 or necessary to salvation." x The language 
 with regard to the primitive creeds is in har- 
 mony with this. They are received upon the 
 express ground that their statements " may 
 be proved by most certain warrants of Holy 
 Scripture." 2 
 
 Here we touch the heart of the question. 
 Rome is arraigned upon the charge of having 
 imposed upon the faithful, as essential to salva- 
 tion, articles of belief that cannot possibly be 
 proved by Holy Scripture. Is this charge true ? 
 
 1 XXXIX Articles, Art. vi. 2 ibid. Art. viii. 
 
58 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 There is a distinction drawn by Roman 
 theologians between what they call " pious 
 opinions " and the actual articles of the faith. 
 Readers of recent controversy have been 
 made very familiar with this distinction ; but 
 others may ask for an explanation. A " pious 
 opinion," then, is a belief that may be very 
 generally entertained among the faithful, 
 while yet it lacks the official seal of the 
 Church's authority. Such an opinion may, 
 at a given time, be exerting far more influ- 
 ence over the minds and hearts of the people 
 than any one of the accredited articles of 
 faith, but so long as it is not defined as 
 dogma, it is an " opinion " still ; it may be 
 reckoned a virtue to receive it, but it is not 
 counted a sin to doubt it, nor a mortal sin to 
 reject it. Many of the superstitious notions 
 for which the Roman Church is popularly 
 held accountable, really belong to the class 
 of pious opinions. No skilled confessor would 
 ever allow an educated Protestant to make 
 these a barrier to his conversion. Nothing 
 is easier than to see in them merely the moss 
 and ivy that soften the outline of an ancient 
 minster wall. 
 
 If the additions Rome has made to the pure 
 faith of the Church were nothing more than 
 
ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 59 
 
 " pious opinions," the law of Christian charity 
 would perhaps demand that we should look 
 upon them indulgently, and not regard them 
 as an insuperable bar to peace. But those 
 additions of which most serious # complaint is 
 made, are not held by Rome as ** pious -opin- 
 ions," they are taught as dogma, and have 
 the full sanction of that Church's authority. 
 Our own times have witnessed the actual 
 transformation by a Papal mandate of what 
 was, twenty years ago, a " pious opinion," 
 into an article of the faith, essential to salva- 
 tion. 1 
 
 In the year 1849 the present Pope wrote 
 to the Bishops of the Roman communion 
 throughout the world, asking them severally 
 whether in their judgment the right time had 
 come to define as dogma the " pious opinion " 
 that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived 
 without stain of original sin. To this circular 
 very many of the most learned and devout 
 among the Bishops replied in the language of 
 
 1 AVell may "Janus" say, in speaking of the possible defi- 
 nition of a " Dogma of the Assumption," " If this floating tra- 
 dition, too, is made into a dogma, under Jesuit inspiration, it 
 may easily be foreseen that the Order — Vappetit merit en 
 mangeant — will bestow many a jewel hereafter on the dogma- 
 thirsting world out of the rich treasures of its traditions and 
 pet theological doctrines." — The Pope and the Council, p. 35. 
 
60 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 respectful remonstrance. Some did not reply 
 at all. The answers returned were collected 
 and printed, and the copious extracts from 
 them given in a note to Dr. Pusey's 
 " Eirenicon " * make the most interesting 
 feature of that learned work. 
 
 1 The Eirenicon, as an Eirenicon, has conspicuously failed. 
 That was a witty saying of the keen-eyed critic of the Oratory, 
 that if his old friend had meant peace, he ought not to have 
 " discharged his olive-branch from a catapult." And so, it 
 would seem, the issue proves. The "union movement," 
 frozen to death by the coldness of the Vatican, is now only an 
 object of derision ; and the Eirenicon, after having demon- 
 strated by its contents the impossibility of union upon an Ultra- 
 montane basis, now serves to illustrate by its history the hope- 
 lessness of union upon a Gallican basis. Viewed in this light, 
 the book has a value that is permanent. Those who are hoping 
 against hope that Rome may yet be persuaded to recognize 
 Anglican Orders, and consent to a capitulation in place of un- 
 conditional surrender, will do well to ponder the following 
 utterance of Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster : 
 " They who teach that the Anglican separation and the Greek 
 schism are parts of the Catholic Church, violate a dogma of 
 faith, destroy the boundaries of truth and falsehood, and make 
 the blind to wander out of his way." — Manning's England and 
 Christendom, p. 63. This is fortified in the appendix to the 
 book quoted by the following official declaration: — 
 
 " From our letters of Sept. 16, 1864, and Nov. 8, 1865, it is 
 clearly and openly manifest that.no one can belong to the true 
 Church of Christ unless he firmly adhere by free subjection 
 of mind and heart and open confession of the lips to the chair 
 of Peter and the Roman Pontiff, who has been divinely con- 
 stituted by Christ our Lord Himself as successor of Peter, 
 Head of His whole Church, the centre of unity, and Pastor 
 with supreme power of feeding both lambs and sheep. God 
 grant it, venerable brothers, that these unhappy wanderers 
 
ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 61 
 
 The reserved and guarded style of many 
 of the communications is very curious. It is 
 a significant fact that of the twenty-eight 
 Roman Bishops then resident in the United 
 States, only one, and he the occupant of a 
 comparatively unimportant see, sent any 
 answer at all. 
 
 Of the Bishops and Archbishops of France, 
 only a bare majority expressed themselves in 
 favor of promulgating the proposed decree. 
 A large number of the German Bishops ad- 
 vised against it. But the almost perfect 
 unanimity of the Italian, Spanish, and Irish 
 ecclesiastics carried the day, and in the year 
 1854 a decree went forth from the Papal 
 chair, authoritatively assigning to the human 
 mother of our Lord an attribute which Holy 
 Scripture gives only to Jesus Christ Him- 
 self. 1 
 
 may abjure their errors, and see the light of Catholic truth, 
 and hasten to the only Fold of Christ. And this we do not 
 omit day and night to ask, in humble and fervent prayer, 
 from the Father of Mercies ; and for this we again and again 
 implore the powerful patronage of the Immaculate and Most 
 Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God." — Epist. & D. N. Pit. 
 P. IX. ad Episcopos Anglice. 
 
 1 The following from Bishop Coxe's Italian letter to Pius IX. 
 is not without its force: "You know, besides, that when a 
 council truly oecumenical assembles, its first duty will be to 
 bring a process against you, under the accusation of your 
 equals, the patriarchs of the East, published to the entire 
 
62 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 We are the more struck by the boldness, 
 some would say the effrontery, of this deliber- 
 ate addition to the faith of the Church, for the 
 reason that it has taken place so recently; 
 but in reality we ought to be equally sensitive 
 to all violations of the principle that a revela- 
 tion cannot be mended by man's wit. An 
 English theologian has depicted in a most 
 striking way the gradual process by which, 
 through neglect of this principle, modern 
 error has become mixed up with primitive 
 
 Christian world. They accuse you of grave heresies — that 
 is, of having taught from your papal chair, and of having im- 
 posed on your followers as " dejide " a fable about the blessed 
 Deipara, which appears to have had for its sole author Maho- 
 met. You attribute to her the special prerogative of her Divine 
 Son, — that is, immaculate conception, — in which thing you 
 disturb the very foundations of the faith. That this dogma is 
 altogether contrary to the faith of St. Peter and of his col- 
 leagues in the apostleship, and of all the Catholic Church, 
 one of your own doctors, St. Bernard, declares. He called 
 the first intimation of the new dogma ' simplicitas paucorum 
 imperitorum, contra ecclesise ritum, prsesumpta novitas, mater 
 temeritatis, soror superstitionis, filia levitatis, quam ritus eccle- 
 sise nescit, non probat ratio, non commendat antiqua traditio ' 
 ( ; the folly of a few fools, a presumptuous novelty, contrary to 
 the usage of the Church, the mother of rashness, the sister of 
 superstition, the daughter of levity, which the rite of the 
 Church knows nothing of, which reason does not approve, 
 nor ancient tradition commend'). Your doctors are accus- 
 tomed to give to St. Bernard the title of ' the last of the 
 Fathers ; ' whence, if St. Bernard had no other knowledge of 
 this dogma, it ought certainly to be unknown to the Fathers 
 before him." — Mills' Translation. 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 63 
 
 truth. The illustration is so perfect that no 
 apology need be made for quoting it at 
 length. 
 
 " Let the whole body of dogmatic truth " 
 (and by this expression is meant all that is 
 authoritatively taught as de fide by any 
 recognized body of Christians) " be con- 
 sidered together. Whatever we may think 
 of the doctrine, let us view the whole as one 
 stream ; then let us trace it backward to its 
 fountain-head, and see what happens. The 
 process is the same as tracing a river to its 
 source. We wish to know whence it derives 
 its waters ; we therefore trace it carefully up 
 the stream, and note where every branch 
 separates, to the right hand, or to the left. 
 No stream that falls in anywhere along the 
 course can form any part of the original 
 waters ; we therefore let it alone, and steadily 
 pursue the central current, till we reach the 
 spot where it flows out of the broad lake or 
 the precipitous mountain-side. 9 ' 
 
 " Let us do the same thing with the dog- 
 matic teaching of the Church ; we shall then 
 see which branch traces its origin furthest 
 back, and forms part of the parent stream. 
 We scarcely commence the process before 
 one doctrine is separated from the mass and 
 
64 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 falls behind us. The dogma of the immacu- 
 late conception of the Virgin Mary reaches 
 no farther back than our own memories. 
 Steadily tracing the course of time back- 
 wards, the dogma of purgatorial fire branches 
 off about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 and dies away as a formal doctrine about the 
 middle of the twelfth. In the early part of the 
 fifteenth century the mutilation of the sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper, by taking away the 
 cup from the laity, disappears. A little further 
 back, at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, we find transubstantiation for the first 
 time dogmatically taught, and in another two 
 or three centuries all traces of it are lost again. 
 In the twelfth century five of the seven sacra- 
 ments disappear, and the two ' ordained by 
 Christ Himself alone survive. In the ninth 
 century the power of canonization for the first 
 time falls into the stream of doctrine, although 
 tendency to saint worship and to incipient 
 Mariolatry reaches further backward. In 
 the beginning of the sixth century the papal 
 supremacy is left behind, and with it the last 
 formal trace of the corrupt dogmas of the 
 East and West." 
 
 He then follows back the undivided stream 
 of truth until he comes to the first century. 
 
EOMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 65 
 
 Here he pauses. Somehow, in that myste- 
 rious century, the river had its earthly birth. 
 " Here, for an historical certainty, the faith 
 
 begins. This admits of no denial We 
 
 stand, as it were, looking into the depths mys- 
 terious, yawning beneath and before the eye, 
 inscrutable and unfathomable, whence the 
 waters spring into the daylight. Look and 
 watch and wonder. What spring is capacious 
 enough to have given them birth ? The 
 channel itself we can see to be as human as 
 ourselves, though of finer and purer soil, as 
 if the ever-gushing fountains of truth close 
 by had clothed it with perennial beauty and 
 verdure. Whence it issues the outward eye 
 cannot see. The spring is there where no 
 human hand can reach, no human foot can 
 tread. It lies in the unseen, not the seen. 
 Stand and watch the waters. All the dear 
 familiar truths are there known to us from 
 our childhood, almost the very words in 
 which the Church is accustomed to express 
 them. How sweetly, purely, freshly, vigor- 
 ously they well forth from the fountain infin- 
 ite, for that fount is God." l 
 
 In this singularly lucid figure, we have the 
 
 i The Dogmatic Faith, The Bampton Lectures for 1867, by 
 the Rev. Edward Garbett, Lect. II. 
 5 
 
bb THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 argument against Rome stated with tremen- 
 dous power. For this is what we charge upon 
 her, that she has suffered to flow into the pure 
 stream of God's truth tributaries that have 
 defiled it. She has added to the word that 
 Christ commanded. She has exaggerated 
 the Divine idea. 1 
 
 A few words as to the present aspects of 
 Romanism in this country. Nowhere in 
 the world, perhaps, does the Papal religion 
 appear to so great advantage as here. No- 
 where are its adherents more justly confi- 
 dent of the future. The repulsive features of 
 the system, that meet .one at every turn in 
 countries where it has been long established, 
 are among us so toned down and modified 
 that its best points are also its salient points. 
 The devotion of the people to their religion ; 
 
 1 At a book-stall in Munich, the writer happened, last Sum- 
 mer, upon a little Latin tract apparently intended for the use 
 of seminary students. It bore the title, " Epitheta Mariana 
 ad majorem Dei et B. Marias Virginis honorein ex Scriptura 
 Sacra, Breviario Romano et Litaniis Lauretanis collecta a 
 Xaverio Pfeifer philosophise professore." A careful count de- 
 veloped the fact that out of the three hundred and eighty-six 
 " epitheta " contained in the collection, four, and only four, to 
 wit, " Ancilla Domini," "Benedicta in Mulieribus," "Gratia 
 Plena," and "Virgo desponsata Joseph," were really "ex Scrip- 
 tura Sacra." The rest were from the sources indicated in the 
 title. This is a good illustration of the way in which Rome 
 develops doctrine by "accretion," instead of by "evolution." 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 67 
 
 their willingness to make the heaviest personal 
 sacrifice for its maintenance and advancement ; 
 their universal recognition of the positive duty 
 of worship ; these are telling arguments with 
 men who make earnestness the only sure test 
 of sincerity. It is simplejustice to the Roman- 
 ists of America to acknowledge that in these 
 points they set an example that ought to put 
 Protestantism to the blush. 
 
 Making all due allowance for the secondary 
 motives that may have fanned their zeal, 
 there yet remains a large amount of single- 
 hearted devotion and self-sacrifice that we 
 cannot discredit without falling into the sin 
 of calling good evil, and evil good. For all 
 this they have their reward. The fact that 
 their Church has been, thus far, the Church 
 of the poor and the unlettered, so far from 
 being against them, will in the end inure to 
 their advantage. The Church of Christ 
 began by being the Church of the poor, and 
 never is she stronger than when she is willing 
 to continue the Church of the poor. 
 
 American Romanists have their reward 
 also in this, that their devoted attachment to 
 their religion has had the effect of drawing 
 the attention of thinking men to the historical 
 and philosophical aspects of their system. 
 
68 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 The mistake of Protestants in this country 
 has been, all along, the common one of un- 
 dervaluing the resources and abilities of their 
 adversary. Our religious writers and plat- 
 form orators have suffered themselves (prob- 
 ably out of ignorance) to speak with the 
 utmost scorn of the intellectual claims of 
 Romanism. Looking only at the patent fact 
 that the bulk of Roman Catholics in this 
 country are rude, uncultivated people, they 
 have drawn the hasty inference that the 
 Roman Catholic religion can only be honestly 
 received by such as are rude and uncultivated, 
 and they have declaimed accordingly. 
 
 Such a view of the subject is only the 
 result of a narrowed horizon. The truth is 
 that Roman Catholicism has its intellectual 
 as well as its popular side, and that, in some 
 of its aspects, it appeals even more strongly 
 to the educated than to the uneducated mind. 
 Whatever influence the grandeur of historical 
 associations can exert, whatever power of 
 persuasion logical subtlety can carry with it, 
 whatever enchantment poetry and art can 
 weave around the aesthetic faculties of the 
 soul, these Rome has at her disposal, and will 
 use when the occasion calls. 
 
 Our people are just becoming aware of the 
 
ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 69 
 
 existence of this side of the subject. It is a 
 surprise to them, and one result of the sur- 
 prise will be that many will pass from an un- 
 due contempt for the Church of Rome into 
 an undue admiration of her. 
 
 Very few deliberately embrace Romanism 
 at present, unless from honest conviction. 
 But, as time goes on, we shall probably see 
 a marked change in this respect. We Amer- 
 icans have a constitutional bias towards the 
 idolatry of success. When any enterprise 
 succeeds, no matter how we may have hated 
 it or opposed it in its progress, we are tempted 
 to fall down and worship it simply because it 
 has succeeded. 
 
 Rome, with her increasing advantages, 
 will, in the future, be very likely to secure 
 the adhesion of that large class which sways 
 to and fro, backwards and forwards, agreeably 
 to the alternations of success. 
 
 But let us remember that although lapse 
 of time and change of fashions may make 
 error respectable, they never can make error 
 true. 
 
 Even should Rome attain, during the com- 
 ing generation, to that ascendency in America 
 for which she so patiently labors, and after 
 which she so fervently aspires, an ascendency 
 
70 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 than which only one other is more to be 
 deplored, even then Rome would be no more 
 right than she is right to-day. If she has 
 indeed added, and added falsely, to the simple 
 Gospel of the Kingdom, such additions will 
 not be lessened nor made innocent by the 
 flight of years. 
 
 No " theory of development," 1 skillfully 
 wrought as it may be, can ever prove the 
 mistletoe to have been in the acorn around 
 the offspring of whose womb it clings. Like 
 produces and develops like, and there are 
 features of Romanism for the like of which 
 we search the New Testament in vain. Let 
 this nation heed well the Apostolic warning, 
 " Stand fast therefore in the liberty where- 
 with Christ hath made us free, and be not 
 entangled again in the yoke of bondage," — a 
 yoke which history tells us our fathers found 
 themselves not able to bear, and which it 
 would be a sad folly in us their sons volun- 
 tarily to assume. 
 
 1 The careful avoidance by the Roman Catholic authorities 
 of anj'thing that might look like an endorsement of Dr. 
 Newman's Essay on the Development of Cliristian Doctrine, 
 would seem to show that they themselves regard the weapon 
 forged by their most distinguished convert a perilous one to 
 use. 
 
 Note. — In view of the strenuous effort now making to 
 persuade the American people that Romanism rightly un- 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 71 
 
 dcrstood is the true remedy for all their social and religious 
 ills, it may not be amiss to reprint side by side, as an Eng- 
 lish writer has lately done, the famous challenge of old 
 Bishop Jewel and the creed of Pope Pius IV. Neither the 
 challenge nor the creed has ever been retracted, but both 
 remain in force. Not even the rhetoric of Paulist Fathers 
 can bridge the ugly chasm that is here seen to lie between 
 Catholic use and Koman abuse. 
 Challenge of Bishop Creed of Pope Pius IV. {imposed 
 
 Jewel [first made at 
 St. Paul's Cross, Nov. 
 26, 1559 ; repeated 
 March 31, 1560]. 
 " If any learned men 
 of all our adversaries, 
 or if all the learned 
 men that be alive, be 
 able to bring any one 
 sufficient sentence out 
 of any old Catholic 
 Doctor or Father, or 
 out of any old General 
 Council, or out of the 
 Holy Scriptures of God, 
 or any one example of 
 the Primitive Church, 
 whereby it may be clear- 
 ly and plainly proved, 
 
 " That there was any 
 private mass in the 
 whole world at that 
 time for the space of 
 six hundred years after 
 Christ; or that there 
 was then any commun- 
 ion ministered unto the 
 
 A. d. 1564, upon all the beneficed 
 Clergy of the Roman Church}. 
 "I, N., believe and profess 
 with a firm faith each and all of 
 the articles contained in the creed 
 which the Holy Koman Church 
 adopts, to wit : — 
 
 " I believe in One God [here 
 follows the 'Nicene Creed.' The 
 Roman form then proceeds.] 
 
 " I most steadfastly admit and 
 embrace Apostolical and Ecclesi- 
 astical Traditions and all other 
 observances and constitutions of 
 the same Church. 
 
 " I also admit the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures, according to that sense 
 which our Holy Mother, the 
 Church, has held and does hold, 
 to which it belongs to judge of 
 the true sense and interpretation 
 of the Holy Scriptures ; neither 
 will I ever take and interpret 
 them but according to the unani- 
 mous consent of the Fathers. 
 
 " I also profess that there are 
 truly and properly seven Sacra- 
 
72 
 
 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 people under one kind ; 
 or, 
 
 " That the people 
 had their common 
 prayers then in a 
 strange tongue that 
 they understood not; 
 or, 
 
 "That the Bishop 
 of Rome was then 
 called an Universal 
 Bishop, or the Head of 
 the Universal Church ; 
 or, 
 
 " That the people 
 was then taught to 
 believe that Christ's 
 Body is really, sub- 
 stantially, corporally, 
 carnally, or naturally 
 in the Sacrament ; or, 
 
 " That His Body is 
 or may be in a thou- 
 sand places at one time; 
 or, 
 
 " That the Priest did 
 then hold up the Sacra- 
 ment over his head ; or, 
 
 " That the people did 
 then fall down and wor- 
 ship it with godly hon- 
 or ; or, 
 
 " That the Sacrament 
 was then, or now ought 
 to be, hanged up under 
 a canopy ; or, 
 
 ments of the New Law, instituted 
 by Jesus Christ our Lord, and 
 necessary for the salvation of 
 mankind, though not for every 
 one ; to wit : Baptism, Confirma- 
 tion, Eucharist, Penance, Ex- 
 treme Unction, Orders, and 
 Matrimony; and that they con- 
 fer grace ; and that of these, 
 Baptism, Confirmation, and Or- 
 ders cannot be reiterated without 
 sacrilege ; and I also receive and 
 admit the received and approved 
 ceremonies of the Catholic 
 Church, used in the solemn ad- 
 ministration of all the aforesaid 
 Sacraments. 
 
 " I embrace and receive all 
 and every one of the things which 
 have been defined and declared in 
 the Holy Council of Trent, con- 
 cerning original sin and justifica- 
 tion. 
 
 " I profess, likewise, that in the 
 Mass there is offered to God a 
 true, proper, and propitiatory 
 sacrifice for the living and the 
 dead ; and that in the Most Holy 
 Sacrament of the Eucharist there 
 are truly, really, and substantial, 
 ly the body, and blood together 
 with the soul and divinity, of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; and that a 
 conversion is made of the whole 
 substance of the bread into the 
 Body, and of the whole substance 
 
ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 73 
 
 " That in the Sacra- 
 ment after the words of 
 consecration there re- 
 maineth only the acci- 
 dents and shows, with- 
 out the substance of 
 bread and wine ; or, 
 
 " That the Priest then 
 divided the Sacrament 
 in three parts, and after- 
 wards received himself 
 all alone ; or, 
 
 " That whosoever had 
 said the Sacrament is 
 a figure, a pledge, a to- 
 ken or a remembrance 
 of Christ's Body had 
 therefore been judged 
 for an heretic ; or, 
 
 " That it was lawful 
 then to have thirty, 
 twenty, fifteen, ten, or 
 five masses said in one 
 church in one day ; or, 
 
 " That images were 
 then set up in the 
 churches, to the intent 
 that people might wor- 
 ship them; or, 
 
 " That the lay-people 
 was then forbidden to 
 read the Word of God 
 in their own tongue — 
 
 " If any man alive 
 were able to prove any 
 of these articles by any 
 
 of the wine into the Blood, which 
 conversion the Catholic Church 
 calls Transubstantiation. I also 
 confess that under either kind 
 alone, Christ is received whole and 
 entire, and a true Sacrament. 
 
 " I constantly hold that there 
 is a Purgatory, and that the souls 
 therein detained are helped by the 
 suffrages of the faithful. 
 
 " Likewise that the saints reign- 
 ing together with Christ, are to 
 be venerated and invocated ; and 
 that they offer prayers to God 
 for us, and that their relics are 
 to be held in veneration. 
 
 " I most firmly assert that the 
 images of Christ, of the Mother 
 of God, ever Virgin, and also of 
 other saints, are to be had and 
 retained ; and that due honor 
 and veneration are to be paid to 
 them. 
 
 "•I also affirm that the power 
 of indulgences was left by Christ 
 in the Church, and that the use 
 of them is most wholesome to 
 Christian people. 
 
 " I acknowledge the Holy, 
 Catholic, Apostolic, Roman 
 Church for the Mother and 
 Mistress of all Churches ; and 
 I promise true obedience to the 
 Bishop of Borne, Successor to St. 
 Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 
74 
 
 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 clear or plain clause or 
 sentence, either of the 
 Scriptures, or of the 
 old Doctors, or of any 
 old General Council, or 
 by any example of the 
 Primitive Church ; I 
 promised then that I 
 would give over and 
 subscribe unto him/' — 
 Bishop Jewel's Works, i. 
 p. 20 (ed. Parker So- 
 ciety). 
 
 From Englandyersus 
 Rome: a Brief Hand- 
 book of the Roman 
 Catholic Controversy, 
 for the use of Mem- 
 bers of the English 
 Church. By Henry 
 Barclay Swete, M. A. 
 London : Rivingtons. 
 
 How theologians like 
 the Abbe Gratry, Dr. 
 Dollinger, and ts Ja- 
 nus " (if he be really 
 not the double of the 
 Munich Professor), who 
 now so vehemently op- 
 pose the definition of 
 the dogma of Infalli- 
 bility, have reconciled 
 themselves to dogmas 
 which, at the time of 
 promulgation, seemed 
 equally " inopportune," 
 is a standing puzzle to 
 the Protestant mind. 
 
 "I likewise undoubtedly re- 
 ceive and profess all other things 
 delivered, defined, and declared by 
 the Sacred Canons and General 
 Councils, and particularly by the 
 Holy Synod of Trent; at the 
 same time I condemn, reject, and 
 anathematize all things contrary 
 thereto, and all heresies which 
 the Church has condemned, re- 
 jected, and anathematized. 
 
 " I, N., do at this present 
 freely profess and sincerely hold 
 this true Catholic faith, without 
 which no one can be saved ; and 
 I promise most constantly to re- 
 tain and confess the same entire 
 and inviolate with God's assist- 
 ance, to the last breath of life, 
 and I will take care, as far as in 
 me lies, that it shall be held, 
 taught, and preached by my sub- 
 ordinates, that is to say, by those 
 the care of whom shall appertain 
 to me in virtue of my office. 
 
 u And this I do promise, vow, 
 and swear : so help me God, and 
 these God's holy Gospels." — 
 Bullarium I. torn. ii. p. 130. 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 75 
 
 IV. 
 
 PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 
 
 If a handful of steel dust be mixed with 
 a dozen handfuls of sand, and then a magnet 
 drawn hither and thither through the heap, 
 the fine metallic particles, yielding to the 
 mysterious law of their nature, are drawn 
 away, while the dull, unsusceptible, passion- 
 less grains of flint remain. Following the 
 old Hebrew usage of enforcing a spiritual 
 truth by some outward parabolic act, one 
 might make this simple experiment a symbol 
 of what is known as the Puritan theory of 
 religion. Suppose the mingled heap to rep- 
 resent the human race. Forget the truth 
 that this same race is a family knit together 
 by its myriad bands of kinship, and look upon 
 it only as a vast congeries of individuals. 
 Of these individuals a certain definite number 
 are salvable, and the Gospel is the magnet 
 by which they are to be reached. The chil- 
 dren of light feel the attraction of the cross. 
 Upon the children of darkness it has no 
 
76 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 power save to condemn. There ensues a 
 process of separation, and those who are thus 
 singled out from the gross body of their fellow- 
 men constitute the Church of the Redeemed. 
 In characterizing this view of Christianity 
 as " the Puritan theory/' the writer intends 
 no disrespect to a word which many excellent 
 and godly people hold in high esteem. Some 
 words force themselves upon us by their very 
 perspicuity. " Puritan '' and " Puritanism ' 
 define with wonderful exactness the reality 
 that lies behind them, and to this felicity of 
 structure they owe their present use. The 
 root of these significant words is pure. The 
 Puritan is he who proposes to cleanse or 
 make pure the Church of Christ by narrow- 
 ing it to the circle of those of whose accept- 
 ance with the Almighty there is perfectly 
 satisfactory proof. Looking constantly in 
 imagination upon the picture of the Church 
 triumphant, that " glorious Church, not hav- 
 ing spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, 5 ' the 
 Puritan is impatient and dissatisfied because 
 the actual Kingdom corresponds so poorly 
 with the ideal. He is convinced that the 
 fault must be wholly in the line of adminis- 
 tration, in the management of the power of 
 the keys. He urges continually a more 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 77 
 
 faithful discipline, and counts it little short 
 of an impiety to call the Church the " Body 
 of the Lord " so long as there is to be seen 
 upon its surface any spot or stain. He loves 
 better to dwell upon the thought of the " few 
 chosen " than upon the thought of the " many 
 called." The " little flock " means more to 
 him than the " ten thousand times ten thou- 
 sand, and thousands of thousands." Naturally 
 to the Puritan the external unity of the 
 Church appears a thing of small moment as 
 compared with its internal sanctity. Better, 
 he argues, separation than corruption. Let 
 us make sure of purity even though we 
 jeopard peace. Let us be continually cleans- 
 ing the Kingdom, even at the risk of turn- 
 ing it upside down. 
 
 That this view of the nature of the Church 
 of Christ has its true side, it would be use- 
 less to deny. A theory which has found so 
 many zealous and able advocates cannot be 
 wholly wrong. The most careless reader of 
 the Scriptures must have noticed how much 
 prominence is given in them to the ideas of 
 election and separation, the two points upon 
 which the parable of the magnet turns. As 
 the inquiry proceeds, full credit wall be given 
 to these elements of truth, and their harmony 
 
78 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 with the principles of genuine Catholicity 
 made plain. 
 
 But it is one thing to admit that a system 
 has truth in it, and quite another to declare 
 that system true. The Puritan is undoubtedly 
 right in demanding that the Church's stand- 
 ard of holiness shall be kept at the highest 
 mark. He is undoubtedly wrong when he 
 makes admission to the Fold, or continuance 
 in it, dependent upon the individual's near 
 approach to this. The Church's standard is 
 one of aspiration, not attainment. Content 
 with nothing short of perfection, she yet, like 
 her Divine Head, bears with imperfection. 
 Let the harvest be gathered now, she says, 
 and winnowed at the Judgment Day. Thus 
 it appears that the issue is between the two 
 ideas of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, com- 
 prehension and selection. On the one side 
 stands the Puritan demanding that the books 
 be opened and the sentence given now ; 
 against him are the Words of Jesus, the 
 Practice of the Apostles, the Experience of 
 History. 
 
 I. The Words of Jesus. " The kingdom 
 of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast 
 into the sea, and gathered of every kind : 
 which when it was full thev drew to shore, 
 
PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 79 
 
 and sat down, and gathered the good into 
 vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it 
 be at the end of the w r orld." Had Christ 
 said not] ling else about the nature of His 
 Church, this in itself would be decisive. 
 The parable cannot possibly be interpreted 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven that is within us, 
 for there is an evident distinction made in it 
 between individuals good and bad. It can- 
 not possibly be interpreted of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven that is to come when the kingdoms 
 of this world shall have passed away, for then 
 how should we explain the reference to the 
 Judgment ? There is but one straightforward 
 and honest way of dealing with the words, 
 and that is to apply them to the Church on 
 earth. Christ means to teach us that in His 
 present Kingdom there must of necessity be 
 a mingling of the holy and the unholy, the 
 worthy and the worthless. When the net is 
 full, the good are to be severed from the bad. 
 When the election is complete, the selection 
 is to begin. 
 
 The College of the Apostles, which was 
 the embryo Church, had from the beginning 
 this mingled character. The Son of Man 
 knew what was in man, and yet of the twelve 
 whom He called to Himself to be His espe- 
 
80 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 cial body-guard, one was a pronounced traitor, 
 another sacrificed fealty to fear, another said, 
 " Except I shall see in His hands the print 
 of the nails, I will not believe." Treachery, 
 timidity, and doubt all had their represent- 
 atives even in that little band to whom the 
 King intrusted the fortunes of His realm. 
 
 It would seem, then, that in so far as we 
 can know the mind of Christ, by observing 
 what He said and what He did, we are bound 
 to believe that He intended. His Church to 
 rest upon the inclusive and comprehensive 
 principle rather than the opposite. If this 
 be so, there is not only no unfairness, there 
 is great propriety, in defining Puritanism as a 
 Diminution of the Divine Idea. Rome adds 
 a cubit to the stature of the Body Mystical 
 of Christ, and thus hurts it by excess. But 
 it is quite as possible to mar that faultless 
 form by belittling its majesty. The " perfect 
 man " to whom St. Paul likens the united 
 and developed Church is neither a giant nor 
 a dwarf. Addition and subtraction are alike 
 fatal to the Gospel's symmetry. The one 
 error gives us grossness ; the other, insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 II. The Practice of the Apostles. During 
 the forty days that intervened between our 
 
PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 81 
 
 Lord's Rising from the Dead and His Ascen- 
 sion, the disciples, we are told, received from 
 Him instruction in " the things pertaining to 
 the kingdom of God." Our only means of 
 ascertaining the purport of that mysterious 
 tuition, is to observe in what way the Apos- 
 tles went to work after they had received it. 
 The signal value of the Book of Acts lies in 
 the fact that there we have recorded this 
 very thing, namely, what the Apostles did. 
 Thus it would seem that this second branch 
 of our inquiry is really but another form of 
 the first. We are still looking to the words 
 of Jesus for our authority, only we read them 
 as translated into actual fact by the hands 
 of those to whom they were committed. In 
 brief, granting that our Lord gave to His 
 infant kingdom a definite charter or con- 
 stitution, there can be no safer guide to the 
 interpretation of it than Apostolic practice. 
 
 The question, then, is this : Did the Apos- 
 tles administer the Church upon the Puritan 
 principle, or did they not ? 
 
 Undoubtedly in so far as Puritanism is 
 synonymous with unusual strictness of life 
 and simplicity of manners, the Twelve were 
 Puritans. The image of holiness they held 
 up was without fleck or blemish. They de- 
 
82 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 sired the Church to mirror this image in its 
 perfectness. But did they seek the fruition 
 of their hope by enforcing an exclusive 
 regimen ? Recall the familiar story of their 
 ministry. No sooner had they received the 
 promised gift of guidance than they went out 
 into all lands, proclaiming, as ambassadors of 
 God, forgiveness to a waiting world. The 
 story of the cross and the story of the Resur- 
 rection made the staple of their message. 
 They preached a death unto sin, because 
 Christ had died, the just for the unjust. 
 They preached a new birth unto righteous- 
 ness, because Christ had risen, and opened 
 unto men the gate of everlasting life. 
 
 It was a simple Gospel, very simple in- 
 deed. Among the people who listened to 
 them, many repented and believed. These, 
 after due instruction, the ambassadors re- 
 ceived into the kingdom by a sacramental 
 rite, and from that time forth they were ad- 
 dressed and treated as heirs of the promises, 
 as children adopted into the family of God, 
 as members of the mystical Body of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. If afterwards some among 
 these converted persons showed signs of 
 weakness, whether in matter of faith or life ; 
 if they yielded to this or that temptation, and 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 83 
 
 in the heat of the conflict with the Evil One 
 gave way once and again, the chief pastors 
 did not call upon the Church to cast out the 
 offending brother that the Body might be 
 kept pure ; but they bade the community 
 use kindness and forbearance, that the erring 
 one might be brought back, the fallen lifted 
 up and made to stand. 
 
 Not that there was no discipline exercised 
 in the Primitive Church. On the contrary 
 this branch of church government was prob- 
 ably in a more healthy condition under the 
 immediate eye of the Apostles than it ever 
 has been since. We know that in one par- 
 ticular instance St. Paul resorted to the ex- 
 treme measure of excommunication. No 
 doubt it w T as the unanimous teaching of the 
 Apostolic Company that the hopelessly bad, 
 the manifestly irreclaimable members should 
 be cut off from the communion of the faith- 
 ful. And yet in reading the Book of Acts 
 and the Epistles, it is difficult to say which 
 strikes us more forcibly, the earnestness of 
 the exhortations to holiness, or the evident 
 willingness to deal charitably and patiently 
 with those members of the community who 
 fail to reach the standard of what a Christian 
 ought to be. 
 
84 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 How often St. Paul, for instance, puts in 
 a word for " the weak brethren ! " How 
 constantly he urges kindness, forbearance, 
 pity, as motives that ought especially to 
 guide the stronger members of the flock. 
 We do not find in his words the faintest 
 trace of any sentimental, feeble indulgence 
 towards sin ; but we do find the most gen- 
 erous and large-hearted spirit of love towards 
 the sinning man or woman who needs to be 
 called back and helped. The Church, as 
 the Apostles present it, is a training school 
 into which all are to be received who hon- 
 estly desire to come. The Master of this 
 school is Christ. They themselves are but 
 ministers, or under-teachers, intrusted with 
 the practical details of management, but in 
 all things subject to the supreme will of the 
 Head. In this school the very highest 
 standard of attainment is to be constantly 
 held up in both the departments of character 
 and scholarship, but at the same time a wise 
 patience must be exercised with those who 
 fail to reach the standard, and even the risk 
 of retaining some unworthy member is to be 
 incurred rather than that any be too hastily 
 excluded. 
 
 The illustration is an imperfect one, as 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 85 
 
 any human illustration of a many-sided Di- 
 vine truth must be. It is imperfect because 
 the Church is something more than a school 
 of learners or disciples ; it is a company of 
 redeemed sinners, pardoned mortals received 
 back to the forfeited privilege of communion 
 with their Maker. But the illustration, 
 albeit inadequate, serves well enough to 
 bring out the important point, namely, that 
 according to the original plan the Christian 
 Church was meant to be an inclusive, com- 
 prehensive, catholic society, and not the 
 opposite. Any system, therefore, that pro- 
 poses to curtail, narrow, or diminish the 
 largeness of the blessing thus bestowed upon 
 the w r orld does violence to the purpose of our 
 Lord. 
 
 III. The Experience of History. How 
 has Puritanism succeeded as a practical work- 
 ing system ? The principle has repeatedly 
 asserted itself in the history of Christianity. 
 Has it borne sweet fruit or bitter? It might 
 seem natural, in making this appeal, to con- 
 sider first of all the case of English Puritanism 
 as being that embodiment of the separatist 
 theory most familiar to the general reader. 
 But it will be well to avoid doing this, for 
 the reason that so many political and quasi- 
 
86 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 political questions are mixed up with the 
 history of English Puritanism as to make the 
 use of it as an illustration perilous. It is 
 above all things desirable, in such an inquiry 
 as this, to avoid anything that may stir 
 prejudice, or put an artificial bias on the 
 judgment. It so happens that we can find 
 a very satisfactory instance of the conflict in 
 actual experience between the two theories 
 of the Church, the exclusive and the inclusive, 
 so ancient as even to antedate that union be- 
 tween Church and State which gives to the 
 question of Puritanism in England and New 
 England its complicated character. 
 
 In the early ages of Christianity, before 
 the faith of the cross had become one of the 
 " tolerated religions " of the Roman Empire, 
 there arose from time to time hot persecu- 
 tions. When these fever-fits of pagan hate 
 came on, a tremendous pressure was brought 
 to bear upon all who were unwilling to deny 
 the faith. The tests of renunciation de- 
 manded by the civil authorities differed in 
 the different persecutions. At one time the 
 plan was to compel the Christians to abjure 
 their religion by giving them the alternative 
 of burning incense to the heathen gods or 
 suffering torture. At another time an em- 
 
PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 87 
 
 peror conceived the idea of exterminating 
 the hated sect by causing the destruction of 
 all the sacred books of the Christians, the 
 precious records of the faith. 
 
 As might have been anticipated, there 
 were among the brethren different degrees 
 of resistance to these attempts. Loyalty to 
 Christ ranged all the way from the unflinch- 
 ing constancy of the martyrs, who gave up 
 life itself rather than waver in their alle- 
 giance, down to the timid time-serving of 
 those who at the first note of alarm hastened 
 to give in their adhesion to the religion of 
 the state. Those who succumbed under the 
 influence brought to bear upon them were 
 classified by their fellow-Christians according 
 to the degree of their inconstancy. There 
 were some, for instance, who secured indem- 
 nity from persecution by purchasing from 
 the magistrates certificates to the effect that 
 they had sacrificed to the heathen gods, 
 although in point of fact they had not done 
 so. This was reckoned a milder and more 
 venial form of apostasy than theirs who 
 voluntarily went over to the pagan side. 
 Then there were " the traditors," as those 
 were called who surrendered their copies of 
 the Holy Scriptures, whence our word " trai- 
 
88 THE CHUBCH-IDEA. 
 
 tor." There were also " the sacrificers" 
 and " the incense-burners," names significant 
 of the particular act by which the faith had 
 been betrayed. 
 
 Now when there came a lull, a longer or 
 shorter period of quiet after a persecution, 
 the question naturally arose in the Church, 
 How should those whose timidity had over- 
 mastered their loyalty be treated ? Should 
 " the lapsed," as the whole body of the un- 
 faithful were called, be received back into 
 church-fellowship, or should the gates of the 
 City of God be closed on them forever ? 
 
 Opinions were divided. On the one side 
 there was the desire to vindicate the purity 
 of the Church, and an unwillingness to seem 
 to make light of the heinous sin of denying 
 Christ. On the other side there was the 
 memory of Peter's denial and his Lord's for- 
 giveness of him, together with a reluctance 
 to drive into despair those who seemed to be 
 deeply penitent for their weakness and terri- 
 bly ashamed of it. The milder party were 
 in favor of receiving back the weak brethren 
 after satisfactory evidence of their repentance, 
 or, at any rate, of not refusing them the 
 consolations of religion in their last hour. 
 The sterner party advocated excision. 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 89 
 
 The mind of the Church, after oscillating 
 between these two courses, very decidedly 
 inclined towards the compassionate one. The 
 inclusive view triumphed over the exclusive, 
 and those who were believed to be the truly 
 penitent among the lapsed were taken back 
 into the fellowship of the faithful. 
 
 But in two memorable instances — one 
 after the Decian, the other after the Diocle- 
 tian persecution — the Puritan party, they 
 who were in favor of utterly refusing recon- 
 ciliation, made a secession from the Church. 
 They protested that it was an intolerable 
 scandal to be compelled to eat with traitors. 
 They would not live in fellowship with men 
 who were willing to allow the Body of the 
 Lord to be thus shamefully defiled. So they 
 departed. They organized their separate 
 communities, and having chosen their own 
 bishops (for in those days even Puritans 
 were Episcopal), declared themselves " the 
 Holy." 
 
 And what was the result ? The result 
 w T as, in each instance, continued existence 
 for tw T o or three generations, ending in grad- 
 ual dissolution and decay. In truth, these 
 separatist bodies carried the seed of their 
 destruction in their own bosoms. The ex- 
 
90 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 elusive principle that had moved them to 
 rend themselves away from the fellowship of 
 the Church, moved them, as fresh occasions 
 of dispute arose, to rend themselves from one 
 another, and so the rending process went on 
 and on until, at last, there was nothing left 
 to rend. 
 
 Thus it must ever be with the working of 
 the separatist principle in the Church. That 
 principle tends inevitably to disintegration. 
 One sect begets another, until gradually the 
 original idea of a company of believers knit 
 together in one organic body dies away, and 
 nothing is left but the barren individualism, 
 whose motto is " Every man for himself." 
 
 In Great Britain alone, the development 
 of the separatist principle has engendered, it 
 is said, no less than ninety different sects, 
 and this enumeration leaves out of the ac- 
 count infidel organizations originally of Chris- 
 tian parentage, as well as the many of all 
 sorts that must have worked themselves out, 
 and died of exhaustion in times past. 
 
 Mystical interpreters of Holy Scripture 
 have sometimes found in the seamless robe 
 of Christ a symbol of His Church. The 
 soldiers who crucified Him scrupled, it is 
 said, to rend it. But we Christians, whom 
 
PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 91 
 
 faith and love ought to have taught better, 
 have done what they, with neither faith nor 
 love, but only out of worldly prudence, re- 
 fused to do. We have rent into a thousand 
 shreds, to every soldier in the wicked con- 
 flict a part, that visible garment of light and 
 beauty by which it was Christ's purpose that 
 His spiritual presence in the world should be 
 made real to men. It is hard to see how 
 any single-hearted, humble minded follower 
 of the Lord Jesus can look with satisfaction 
 on the spectacle. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the presence 
 of the Puritan spirit in the Church is health- 
 ful and desirable. There is need of a per- 
 petual voice of warning against the tempta- 
 tion to obliterate the line between the Church 
 and the world. The strictness of the Puritan 
 is an admirable balance to the charity of the 
 Catholic. It is when the Puritan passes 
 from undervaluing unity into breaking unity 
 that the harm is done. He goes out and 
 establishes his rival altar. He makes, as he 
 imagines, a new and cleaner church. And 
 what follows ? So long as the traditions of 
 the quarrel can be kept alive, and the zeal 
 of the fathers runs in the blood of the chil- 
 dren, the sect preserves integrity ; but by 
 
92 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 and by the original ground of the separation 
 is forgotten, and the movement either changes 
 its direction, or runs out into nothingness 
 like a river in the sand. 
 
 We have been considering the short-com- 
 ings of Puritanism as a polity. A parallel 
 line of thought would show how the separa- 
 tist principle also impoverishes doctrine. It 
 stands to reason that the theology of a party 
 — and every sect is by its very nature a 
 party — must be one-sided. The founder of a 
 "denomination" is generally a man who has 
 a singularly clear and strong perception of 
 some one truth of religion. This, the planet- 
 ary centre around which all his own thoughts 
 revolve, becomes, as a matter of course, 
 the pivot of the system he imposes on his 
 followers. This cardinal truth may be the 
 Fatherhood of God, or it may be the Second 
 Coming of our Saviour, or it may be the im- 
 portance of administering baptism in some 
 particular way : whatever it is, the sectarian 
 mind dwells on it to the exclusion of all else, 
 so that gradually articles of the faith which, 
 at the start, no one would have thought of 
 disavowing, fall into the background and are 
 lost. 
 
 Count the steeples in an American town. 
 
PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 93 
 
 It is all very well to say that they are so 
 many finger-posts pointing heavenwards. 
 In reality, each is the representative of a 
 certain portion of truth, torn out of its place 
 in the perfect circle of Catholic doctrine, and 
 mangled in the process. 1 The Puritan theory, 
 undervaluing, as it does, the importance of 
 Church-life, forms a theology wholly subjec- 
 tive ; and this, becoming gradually more and 
 more attenuated, at last provokes men to ex- 
 claim with a sharp satirist, " Enough of this 
 invisible Christianity ! " 
 
 No one can ever know how large a pro- 
 portion of our current infidelity is traceable 
 to the disgust engendered in educated minds 
 by sectarian narrowness. The thoughtful 
 boy, coming suddenly to the knowledge that 
 the ocean of God's truth is broader and 
 deeper than the village mill-pond by which 
 he was brought up, is often hasty to resolve 
 that he will start upon the open sea in his 
 own skiff, unpiloted, and with no compass 
 but the stars. 
 
 The individual mind, however marvel- 
 ously fashioned and endowed, is never com- 
 petent to gather up into itself the full wealth 
 of the Christian revelation ; and a sect that 
 
 1 See Appendix note A. 
 
94 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 does no more than reflect the thoughts of 
 some spiritual giant of the past, is forever 
 liable to overthrow at the hands of some 
 spiritual giant of the present, possibly a 
 child of its own begetting. Happy those 
 souls that are content to rest in a truth 
 larger than they can grasp, willing to " know 
 in part," but not willing to call a part the 
 whole. 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 95 
 
 LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 
 
 Some horticulturists are fond of forcing 
 vegetable growths into gigantic forms. Others 
 have the Japanese taste for cultivating dwarf 
 varieties. With still others it is a passion 
 to twist Nature into curious and grotesque 
 shapes, compelling her, as it were, to carica- 
 ture herself. In a word, the target of per- 
 fection may be missed in any one of three 
 ways. A shot may fly beyond the range, or 
 it may fall short, or again it may be, as we 
 say, "beside the mark." In Nature's arch- 
 ery one of these errors gives us exaggeration, 
 another diminution, and the third distortion. 
 
 But plants and trees and animals are not 
 the only things that grow. An idea, a cre- 
 ative germ of thought, also possesses this 
 strange power of taking increase. Not only 
 so, an idea, equally with a plant, is suscepti- 
 ble in its growth to disturbing influences 
 from without, and may be forced into depar- 
 ture from its normal type either in the way 
 of exaggeration, diminution, or distortion. 
 
\)b THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Granting, then, that there existed in the 
 mind of Christ a distinct conception of the 
 nature of the new society He founded, it is 
 evident that the idea might have been ex- 
 pected to undergo at men's hands these three 
 forms of variation. In point of actual fact 
 this is just what has occurred. In Romanism 
 we have the Church-Idea exaggerated ; in 
 Puritanism it is belittled ; in Liberalism it is 
 caricatured. 
 
 Two of these misapprehensions of the full 
 Gospel of the Kingdom have been already 
 studied. There remains the third — Liber- 
 alism. 
 
 What is Liberalism? One might well 
 wish to be excused from answering the ques- 
 tion on the score of its difficulty. It is not a 
 question that can be answered in a breath ; 
 and yet it must be answered, and that satis- 
 factorily, before we can go on. The reason 
 why it is hard to define Liberalism is because 
 of the uncertain and indefinite nature of the 
 thing itself. In dealing with Romanism and 
 Puritanism, we had something tangible to 
 handle, for Romanism and Puritanism are 
 systems. But Liberalism is not a system. 
 Its very characteristic is its want of system. 
 Liberalism is a spirit, a tendency, a move- 
 
LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 97 
 
 ment, a slippery something in striving to 
 grasp which we seem to clutch the air. And 
 yet, in spite of the subtle character that 
 attaches to the word, every educated mind 
 associates a meaning with it, and is sure that 
 it stands for something that does actually 
 exist. 
 
 Perhaps it will help us to ascertain just 
 what Liberalism is, if we determine in ad- 
 vance what it is not. First of all, then, let 
 it be carefully noted that Liberalism is not 
 the same thing as liberality. The two words 
 furnish an instance of a curious law of lan- 
 guage, according to which substantives of 
 widely different character may be formed 
 from one and the same adjective. Thus from 
 " scrupulous " we make both " scrupulous- 
 ness" and "scrupulosity," — the one a 
 strong, the other a weak trait. " Prudent " 
 gives us " prudence " and " prudery," — the 
 first a quality we value, the second a quality 
 we dislike. And so also the word " liberal " 
 develops, on the one hand, into " liberality," 
 a thing every one admires, and, on the 
 other into " liberalism," a thing many per- 
 sons distrust. Indeed, there exists between 
 " liberality " and " liberalism " much the 
 same kind of distinction that we observe be- 
 
 7 
 
98 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 tween " liberty " and " license." Liberty is 
 freedom subject to the control of righteous 
 law. License is freedom declaring itself in- 
 dependent of all law. An advocate for 
 liberty only asks to be free to do what is 
 right. An advocate for license asks to be 
 free to do what he pleases. 
 
 We are now ready for a definition, and can 
 make it the more intelligently for having 
 taken these preliminary steps. Let the defi- 
 nition be this : Liberalism in religion is the 
 spirit that is impatient of anything like au- 
 thority, whether in the line of doctrine or dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 Liberalism passes in society under various 
 names, some of them very high-sounding 
 ones. Thus we have " free-thought," the 
 equivalent of the old-fashioned free-thinking ; 
 we have " advanced thought," we have " free 
 religion," we have " the higher criticism," 
 we have " the modern spirit," and the like. 
 All of them are phrases dazzling and fasci- 
 nating to a certain class of minds, but under- 
 neath them all there lies the disposition to 
 rebel against authority because it is authority, 
 and an eagerness to sacrifice upon the altar 
 of spiritual freedom all that makes it worth 
 our while to be spiritually free. 
 
LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 99 
 
 The battle-cry of Liberalism is, " Religion 
 without dogma, and a Church without a 
 pale ! " It is a popular shout. Dogma is 
 one of the best-hated words in the language. 
 Any man may cast a stone at it, not only 
 with impunity, but with applause. Harmless 
 enough in itself, the word has somehow come 
 to have a very spectral and uncanny look in 
 the eyes of the public. 
 
 And yet, when we sit down calmly and 
 think about it, how can there well be any 
 such thing as " religion without dogma ? " 
 A dogma is simply an article of faith received 
 and held as certain. Now since a religion 
 must, for its very life's sake, claim to be true, 
 and since the merest pittance of truth, when 
 once put into the form of statement, be it 
 a statement of only three words, becomes 
 dogma, it is difficult to see how a perfectly 
 undogmatic religion is to be attained. It can 
 only come to pass in one way, and that is by 
 persuading men to preface every article of 
 faith with a " perhaps." If the world can 
 be taught to throw all its religious thinking; 
 into the form of hypothesis, and to begin its 
 creed with "I conjecture" instead of "I 
 believe," the victory of Liberalism over dog- 
 ma will be complete. No less a task than 
 
100 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 this, the advanced thought of our day pro- 
 poses to itself. 
 
 Christianity, as a religion, rests upon cer- 
 tain alleged supernatural facts. Take one 
 of the simplest and least technical statements 
 of these facts we have. Let it be that short 
 compend of first principles known as " the 
 Apostles' Creed." From its opening sen- 
 tence, where we confess our faith in an Al- 
 mighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, 
 to those solemn closing words that tell of our 
 belief in an everlasting life to come, there is 
 not a single affirmation which Liberalism, in 
 some one or other of its forms, has not made 
 bold to doubt. Indeed, Liberalism desires to 
 treat all these points as open questions to be 
 discussed, like the unsettled problems of sci- 
 ence and philosophy, without the slightest 
 semblance of restraint. 
 
 But the Church takes, and always has 
 taken, a very different view of this whole 
 matter. The Church accounts herself to be 
 a custodian or trustee of what was at the 
 beginning committed to her to keep. The 
 very existence of the Church rests upon the 
 revealed truths she holds like family jewels 
 in her charge. Take away the facts in which 
 Christians say that they believe, and the fab- 
 
LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 101 
 
 ric we name the Church becomes at once no 
 better than a tottering shell, unfit to stand 
 against a breath of wind. 
 
 This constancy of the Church to her be- 
 lief is a perpetual irritation to Liberalism. 
 " What is this Church of Christ," it asks, 
 " that she should presume to put a check or 
 barrier to the absolute freedom of man's 
 thought ? Whence comes the authority that 
 meets us with a ' Thus saith the Lord,' and 
 bids us listen and obey ? Away w T ith her ! 
 Away with her ! She is an enemy to lib- 
 erty ! " But when Liberalism thus cries out 
 against the Church, and demands the level- 
 ing of her walls upon the plea of larger lib- 
 erty, Christians have a right to raise the 
 questions, What is liberty ? and where is lib- 
 erty to be sought? An Apostle has given 
 an answer that will suffice for those who are 
 themselves believers. This is what he says 
 about it : " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, 
 there is liberty." 
 
 If there is any promise in the New Testa- 
 ment that is clear and definite, it is the 
 promise that the Spirit shall be given to the 
 Church. Before He suffered, our Lord, in 
 the most solemn manner gave to His Apos- 
 tles, the then representatives of His Church, 
 
102 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 the assurance that the Holy Spirit should be 
 their constant guide and stay. It was in the 
 strength of this assurance that those Apostles 
 made bold to speak of the Church as a body 
 in which, as in a temple, the Spirit of God 
 dwells. If, then, it be true, as one of them 
 avers, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, 
 there is liberty, and if it be also true that, 
 wherever else the Spirit of the Lord dwells, 
 His presence is especially and particularly 
 promised to the Church, then how can we 
 refuse this plainest of inferences that in the 
 Church, and in the fellowship of the Church's 
 Head, true liberty is to be sought ? 
 
 But it may be said that this conclusion is 
 reached only by an adroit dovetailing of texts 
 for which Liberalism has small respect. The 
 argument has weight with those w 7 ho believe 
 the Apostles to have been taught by God, 
 but not with those who look upon the Apos- 
 tles as ordinary men, endowed with " a gen- 
 ius for religion." Granted. But let us see 
 whether the same conclusion may not be 
 reached by quite a different path. 
 
 A man complains that it cramps his liberty 
 to be obliged to accept as certain and indis- 
 putable those great doctrines of which the 
 Church has been the witness and keeper 
 from the beginning. He should feel freer if 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 103 
 
 those points were to be thrown open to de- 
 bate. But suppose he has his wish : what kind 
 of a freedom would it be? Begin with any 
 one of the primal teachings of Holy Scripture. 
 Take, for example, that all-important dogma 
 with which the Creed already quoted opens : 
 " I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
 Maker of Heaven and Earth." This brief 
 declaration, simple as it seems to be, admits 
 of at least three doubts. 
 
 First, there is the possible doubt as to 
 whether there be any God at all. The Scrip- 
 tures themselves assure us that such a doubt 
 has been entertained. " The fool hath said 
 in his heart, There is no God." Here, then, 
 there is room for one controversy. 
 
 Secondly, there is the possible doubt 
 whether this Almighty Being, supposing 
 Him to exist, possesses the attributes of a 
 Father. Perhaps there is a God, but is He 
 indeed God the Father? There are many 
 facts in life that seem to militate very strong- 
 ly against such a belief. It certainly is most 
 difficult to reconcile the mysterious allotments 
 of sorrow, pain, and wretchedness we see 
 around us with any simply human concep- 
 tion of fatherhood. Here, then, there is 
 room for another controversy. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the possible doubt as to 
 
104 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 whether God can in any proper sense be 
 called " the Maker of Heaven and Earth." 
 There are not wanting those who tell us that 
 to look for any God other than the indwell- 
 ing mind in Nature, the life-principle of the 
 Universe, the immanent Spirit, is to grope 
 after a nonentity. God and Nature are de- 
 clared to be conterminous and coeternal ; and, 
 if this be true, it certainly is an abuse of 
 language to speak of One who has no exist- 
 ence apart from the heavens and the earth 
 as being the " Maker " of them both. Here, 
 then, there is room for still another contro- 
 versy ; making the third that can be evolved 
 out of one single article of the faith, and that 
 the very one which is least often called in 
 question. 
 
 Now the ground that the Christian Church 
 occupies is perfectly intelligible and distinct. 
 The Church says, " This is the first article of 
 our belief. We regard it as settled and un- 
 changeable. We are ready to defend it, with 
 the weapons of argument, against attacks 
 from without, but we cannot and will not 
 allow it to be questioned from within ; for 
 such a permission would be nothing more 
 nor less than a breach of trust. The faith 
 has been given to us to keep, and we must 
 keep it, or else turn traitors to our Lord." 
 
LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 105 
 
 The position of Liberalism is also perfectly 
 intelligible and distinct. Liberalism says, 
 " No matter where you got this article of 
 the faith, it must come into the arena of dis- 
 cussion along with everything else. This is 
 the age of investigation, and no belief is too 
 sacred for our analysis. To draw the line 
 anywhere, and say, * Here debate must cease,' 
 is to fetter and enslave free thought." 
 
 These being the respective positions of the 
 Church and Liberalism, to which are we to 
 look for the truest and best kind of liberty ? 
 Or, to put the question in another form, 
 Which is indeed the spiritually free man, — 
 he who believes with heart and mind and 
 soul in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 Heaven and Earth, and who in the strength 
 of this belief lives out his life trustfully and 
 hopefully, confident that nothing possibly can 
 harm him so long as the Sheltering Wings 
 and the Guiding Hand are near ; or he who, 
 resolutely bent on keeping clear of what he 
 deems the shackles of a definite belief, dwells 
 all his days in a cloud-land of uncertainty, a 
 companionless spirit to whom God is " a feel- 
 ing," prayer an absurdity, futurity a blank ? 
 Which of these two is the really free man ? 
 And where lies true liberty, — on the side of 
 
106 THE CHURCH— IDEA. 
 
 the b:aste:I Spirit of the Age. or on the hie 
 of that other and better spirit, the Spirit of 
 
 T;:e yuestim all lies in a nut-shell. En :-r 
 is :: milage. Truth is I: G 
 
 revealed troth to men in Jesus Christ, which 
 truth without such a revelation could not fa r 
 been discovered, is it not as plain as it can be 
 that those who refuse to receive this truth 
 are the b on amen, and those who gladly re- 
 :eive it the rree ? •* Then said Jesus to those 
 Jew> which believed on Hi:::. I:' ye :on- 
 tinue in my word, then are ye my disc: les 
 indeed: And ye -hah know the truth, and the 
 shah make vourree." 1 St. Pari'- say- 
 ing about liberty is but the scholar's echo ot 
 these the Master's words. 
 
 We have been considering the attitude 
 Liberalism holm mwaras Christian Theology, 
 strictly s: nailed. Its attituae towards Chris- 
 tian ethi:s might be ma lie the -tube:: :: a 
 
 _ .1 iimuiry. Theology ana morality 
 sisters. To sunder tueiu is woe to both. 
 The one is religion looking God-ward, the 
 other is religion looking man-ward. Tie 
 connection between the creed mmu- 
 
 nity and its usages and customs is much 
 
 1 C:iz vOi. it. 12. 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 107 
 
 more close than it is now the fashion to ad- 
 mit. The poet shows the insight of the phi- 
 losopher when he affirms that 
 
 " Manners are not idle , " 
 
 for manners are morals, and morals are the 
 fruit of principles, false or true. 
 
 The influence of Liberalism upon this hu- 
 man side of religion has been significantly 
 pointed out by a familiar writer upon the his- 
 tory of language. " Full of instruction and 
 warning," he remarks, " is our present em- 
 ployment of the word ' libertine.' It signi- 
 fies, according to its earliest use in French 
 and English, a speculative free-thinker in 
 matters of religion, and in the theory of mor- 
 als, or, it might be, of government. But as, 
 by a sure process, free-thinking does and will 
 end in free-acting, as he who has cast off the 
 one yoke will cast off the other, so a libertine 
 came, in two or three generations, to signify 
 a profligate." 1 
 
 The statement is undoubtedly too strongly 
 put. " He who has cast off the one yoke " 
 does not, as a necessary consequence, " cast 
 off the other." The champions of Liberal- 
 ism have often been, as individuals, eminently 
 
 i Abp. Trench, The Study of Words, s. v. 
 
108 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 irreproachable in their lives. But the sub- 
 stantial truth of the writer's argument is not 
 affected by this fact. Principles which a phi- 
 losopher can hold in his study with no dam- 
 age to his personal purity may prove to be 
 poisonous leaven for the daily bread of a 
 community. The multitude have wit enough 
 to see that the same logical hammer that has 
 destroyed the first table of the Law can also 
 shiver the second, if they only have the mind 
 to strike ; for if nothing be settled about our 
 duty towards God, it is an easy inference 
 that nothing is settled about our duty towards 
 our neighbors. 
 
 Certain it is that Liberalism, under all its 
 forms, betrays a strong reluctance to recog- 
 nize the guilt of sin. Sin is an error, sin is 
 imperfection, sin is partial knowledge, sin is 
 spiritual ill-health, sin is a misdirection of the 
 will, sin is — anything but guilt. The race 
 needs refining, that is all ; and man may 
 pray, "Lord, teach!" but never "Lord, 
 forgive ! " We find this " liberal " view of 
 human guilt penetrating every department 
 of modern thought. Thus we have histor- 
 ical writers like the late Mr. Buckle, propos- 
 ing to formulate the laws of crime and re- 
 duce them to a system ; poets of the animal 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 109 
 
 order teaching that instinct is the only gauge 
 of duty ; pantheistic essayists defining evil as 
 " good in the making ; " and authors of ro- 
 mance justifying the outrageous vagaries of 
 their heroes on grounds of physiological ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 It is now evident for what reason Liberal- 
 ism was called at the outset a distortion of 
 the Divine idea. A Church fiercely intoler- 
 ant of dogma, while mildly tolerant of sin, 
 is assuredly but a caricature of that clear- 
 walled city built upon a rock, whose name 
 is Holy. 
 
 The Catholic Church of Liberalism ought 
 rather to be likened to the restless, passion- 
 ate, tumultuous sea. And so it has been lik- 
 ened by one 1 whom the writer would by no 
 means charge with ultra-liberalism, in a word- 
 picture of marvellous felicity. 
 
 " This great rolling ocean, which looks up 
 to God, is ordered by God, and obeys God, 
 though each wave-crest offers its own hom- 
 age, each tide-surge worships in its own way. 
 6 How lawless ! ' mutters the scientific theolo- 
 gian standing on the beach. « What rebels ! ' 
 cries the petty prince from some sectarian 
 Heptarchy, as the disobedient tide drives 
 
 1 The Rev. Edward Everett Hale. 
 
110 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 him from his throne upon the sand. 1 But 
 the great God looks on, and sees that there 
 is no rebellion, and that there is perfect law. 
 This ocean never rests. It pants, it heaves, 
 or it throws up its blue waves till they crest 
 themselves with white and faint away ; or 
 they pour on incessant, one infinite proces- 
 sion, to fling themselves in order against the 
 shore : or they drop into a sleep which is 
 not death, but breathes steadily and regularly 
 as a sleeping child, and so in their calm re- 
 flect the blue of heaven : or they fling them- 
 selves higher and higher toward the sky, 
 dropping down exhausted only to start up 
 again with one effort more : or. lying still be- 
 neath His sunshine, they deliver to His de- 
 mand the unseen vapors, which He transfuses 
 into delicious showers with which to bless 
 the thirsty ground. And in this rest or in 
 that convulsion, tide- wave, wind-wave, white 
 crest, spray-dust, or unseen vapor-cloud, each 
 in its own beautiful service, obeys one law 
 of attraction. — fulfils the word of Him who 
 sets it in order. That is the ima^e Christ 
 chooses to describe his Church." 2 
 
 1 It is. of course, by a poetical license that this brilliant, but 
 not always accurate writer makes Canute the Dane a repre- 
 sentative of the Heptarchy. 
 
 2 The Elements of Christian Doctrine, and its Development. 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. Ill 
 
 Nothing in the way of rhetorical effort 
 could easily surpass this ; but most readers 
 will be a little surprised to learn that the say- 
 ing of our Lord's from which this analogy 
 between Church and ocean was drawn, 1 is 
 the following : — 
 
 " For as in the days that were before the 
 flood, they were eating and drinking, marry- 
 ing and giving in marriage, until the day that 
 Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until 
 the flood came and took them all away ; so 
 shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." 
 
 Most interpreters of the words of Jesus, 
 St. Peter 2 among them, have thought, natu- 
 rally enough, that it was Noe's preservation 
 from the violence of the sea, rather than the 
 whelming of the unrighteous world beneath it, 
 that gave point to the similitude. The Ark 
 is the Church, not the wild waters on which 
 it floats solitary but secure. And yet this 
 writer finds in the deluge " the image Christ 
 chooses to describe His Church." God forbid. 
 
 The Catholic Church of Liberalism can 
 consistently acknowledge no limits narrower 
 than those that bound the human race itself. 
 
 Five Sermons preached before the South Congregational So- 
 ciety, Boston, 1860 p. 41. 
 
 1 The Elements of Christian Doctrine, and its Development, 
 P- 4 0. 2 i p e t. iii. 21. 
 
112 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 " It goes below any one specific form of relig- 
 ion, and seeks to find the common ground 
 on which all religions, or more properly relig- 
 ion itself, rests, and plants itself there. It 
 contemplates the ultimate union, not only of 
 all sects in Christendom, but of all religions, 
 Christian and non-Christian in one." x To 
 draw a line anywhere, and say, " On this side 
 is the Church, On that the world," would be 
 a proceeding fatally inconsistent with the first 
 principles of Liberalism. It would be setting 
 up a barrier, and a barrier is of all things the 
 one that Liberalism most abhors. 
 
 Liberalism would make of the Church a 
 vast, world-wide debating club ; a society of 
 which every man should be, in virtue of his 
 birth, a member, and in which all questions 
 touching either the Creator or His creatures, 
 the past, the present, or the future, might be 
 endlessly discussed, and never permanently 
 settled. 
 
 Now there can be nothing to prevent men 
 from taking this position if they choose. In- 
 deed, it is the only position that a denier 
 of revelation can consistently assume. But 
 when it is attempted to make it out that such 
 
 1 First Annual Report of Free Religious Association, Boston, 
 1868. 
 
LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 113 
 
 notions are reconcilable with Christianity, 
 even with a Christianity that has been wa- 
 tered down to its very weakest dilution, then 
 it is time for those who believe that the Gos- 
 pel is something better than a guess, and the 
 Church of Christ something more than a con- 
 trivance of man's brain, to speak out and say 
 so plainly. 
 
 The Holy Catholic Church is not a volun- 
 tary religious association formed by men for 
 the purpose of freely handling the problems 
 of human destiny. It is a family, a brother- 
 hood, a household, to whose guardian care the 
 archives of the faith have been intrusted. The 
 members of this family have no authority to 
 tamper with, to change or modify the sacred 
 deposit given into their care. God's oracles 
 are a trust. The generations before us held 
 it for our sake ; we are to hold it for the gen- 
 erations yet to come. And let it be held lib- 
 erally, that is to say, generously and charita- 
 bly, for we cannot err upon the side of too 
 much love for men ; and it is well always to re- 
 member that even " Jews, Turks, Infidels, and 
 Heretics," although not of God's household, 
 the Church, are yet members of that scattered 
 family for " which our Lord Jesus Christ was 
 contented to be betrayed, and to suffer death 
 upon the cross." 
 
114 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 There is a short sentence in one of the 
 most beautiful of the parables, which gathers 
 up with marvellous comprehensiveness the 
 essentials of Catholicity, while at the same 
 time it may serve to warn us against those 
 very three perversions to which, as has been 
 shown, the Church-Idea is subject. A glance 
 at it will answer the double purpose of a 
 review and a comparison, and may not inap- 
 propriately close the present chapter. 
 
 Our Lord is speaking in His character of 
 the Good Shepherd, and after telling of His 
 great love towards the sheep already gathered, 
 He thus proceeds : — 
 
 " And other sheep I have, which are not 
 of this fold ; them also I must bring, and they 
 shall hear My voice, and there shall be one 
 fold and one Shepherd/' 1 
 
 Take this prophecy part by part, and notice 
 how the words, intended to apply primarily 
 to His Jewish hearers, have also a lesson for 
 ourselves. 
 
 " Them also I must bring, and they shall 
 hear My voice" This may be understood as 
 Christ's gentle expostulation with the spirit of 
 Romanism. Rome has indeed heard His voice, 
 but she has heard and given heed to other 
 
 i John x. 16. 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 115 
 
 voices than His, the voices of enchanters and 
 enchantresses that have led her away captive. 
 
 " One is your Master, even Christ," said 
 Jesus to the Apostles, " and all ye are breth- 
 ren." Had Rome cherished this word, the 
 Papacy would not have been. 
 
 " I am the w T ay, and the truth, and the 
 life. No man cometh unto the Father but by 
 Me." Had Rome cherished this word, saint- 
 worship and Mariolatry would not have been. 
 
 " It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh 
 profiteth nothing." Had Rome cherished this 
 word, transubstantiation would not have been. 
 
 " Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood 
 of the New Testament." Had Rome cher- 
 ished this word, the denial of the cup to the 
 people would not have been. 
 
 Yes, it is because Rome has followed after 
 other words than those of the Lord Jesus, that 
 she has lost, or rather overlaid, the true idea 
 of Catholicity. 
 
 Again listen to the Good Shepherd's voice : 
 " And there shall be onefold." 
 
 This is His gentle expostulation with the 
 spirit of Puritanism. In his zeal for the well- 
 being of God's heritage, the Puritan cannot 
 bear to see the tares intermingled with the 
 wheat. Whether the good grain suffers or 
 
116 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 not, these hurtful weeds must be plucked up, 
 and that speedily. The one message to which 
 his ears are always open is the command, 
 " Come out, and be ye separate." As a 
 necessary consequence, division and subdivis- 
 sion follow upon the application of this prin- 
 ciple ; the idea of the one fold is hopelessly 
 lost ; and presently, in the strife between a 
 score of competing folds, it is no wonder that 
 poor, simple souls find themselves bewildered 
 and distraught. Not that Puritanism is whol- 
 ly in the wrong ; only as Romanism, in its zeal 
 for the " one fold," forgets some things that the 
 Good Shepherd says ; so this system, which 
 is practically the opposite of Romanism, in its 
 zeal for some things the Good Shepherd says, 
 forgets in its turn the value of the " one fold." 
 Listen yet once more : " One Shepherd" 
 Here is the corrective to the error of 
 the liberal extreme. The mistake of Liber- 
 alism lies precisely in this, that it is not 
 contented with the " one Shepherd." It 
 looks for, and it demands, other leaders 
 than the Son of Mary. " The Christian 
 Church," writes one who heartily believes 
 what he says, " is not large enough for 
 this independent, sturdy, vigorous America. 
 A native religion, not fetched from beyond 
 
LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 117 
 
 the seas, a religion universalized by the ge- 
 nius of American liberty, must yet supplant 
 the narrow and cramping Christianity of the 
 Churches." There spoke the true spirit of 
 Liberalism. It is reconcilable with the idea 
 of " One Fold," if we will only make the Fold 
 as wide as the world, and give free play in it 
 to all conceivable religions ; but it is not re- 
 concilable with the " one Shepherd," for to 
 acknowledge unreserved fealty to Him is, in 
 the eye of Liberalism, to put shackles upon 
 the freedom of the soul. 
 
 True Catholicity holds all three of the re- 
 quirements of the prophecy in faithful equi- 
 poise. 
 
 It listens to the Good Shepherd's voice. 
 
 It is loyal to the idea of the " One Fold." 
 
 It owns no other Master than the Christ 
 Himself. 
 
 God in His mercy grant that no " native 
 religion " ever supplant this one " fetched 
 from beyond the seas.' 5 
 
118 THE CBTRCH-IDEA. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 
 
 Our public orators are continually remind- 
 ing us that America is " the theatre of a 
 grand experiment." When we modestly ask 
 to be told what the experiment is, we have, 
 to be sure, some difficulty in getting a plain 
 and consistent answer. Some will have it 
 that it is Republican Government which is 
 on trial, others say the federal principle, others 
 popular education, still others universal suf- 
 frage. But in truth the elder world is not 
 wholly unfamiliar with these things. A Re- 
 public is no novelty in history, neither is a 
 federation, nor yet public schools and ballot 
 boxes. 
 
 The peculiarity of our situation really lies, 
 not in the fact that we have unexpectedly 
 come into possession of a new stock of ideas, 
 but in this, that we are testing a novel com- 
 bination of old ideas under circumstances pe- 
 culiarly favorable to success. 
 
 Instead, then, of speaking of the American 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 119 
 
 experiment, it might be wiser to say the 
 American experiments. Indeed, there is 
 nothing to which our country may be better 
 compared than a great working laboratory, 
 where a host of students are busily engaged, 
 each on his own separate investigation. Cru- 
 cibles of every shape and size are on the fire, 
 retorts are steaming, solutions crystallizing, 
 blow-pipes hissing in all directions. Who is 
 to collate the note-books of the various an- 
 alysts, and draw out in a finished form the re- 
 sults of discovery, if any discovery there be, 
 another age must determine. At present all 
 is activity and bustle. Each experimental- 
 ist firmly believes himself to be upon the scent 
 of truth, and it is hard to persuade any one 
 of the number that possibly his neighbor's 
 line of inquiry may be as important as his 
 own. 
 
 Under these circumstances the present 
 writer may, without apology, boldly claim 
 that the experiment of greatest moment now 
 in progress here is not popular government 
 at all, but this, The mutual independence of 
 Church and State. 
 
 We have dissolved a partnership which for 
 fifteen hundred years the world held sacred. 
 Never since the short period between the 
 
120 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 Edict of Milan i a. d. 313) and the Council 
 of Nice (a. d. 3-5). has the religion of the 
 cross found itself in circumstances at all par- 
 allel to those that environ it here and now. 
 
 Sow this state of things has come about, a 
 quick review of the past will show, 
 
 During the first two centuries of her exist- 
 ence the Church of Christ occupied the posi- 
 tion of ... lespised and persecuted sect. In 
 the third century she was still oppressed, but 
 at the same timeless lespised than feared. 
 Early in the fourth century State persecution 
 seased, and that far more deadly enemy to 
 the Church's health State patronage began. 
 It was in the person of the Emperor Constan- 
 tine that the idea of an alliance between 
 Church and State was first embodied. Ever 
 since his day that alliance has been under 
 one form or another perpetuated throughout 
 Christian Europe. Whether the grim saying 
 ofHobbes that the Papacy is only M the ghost 
 of the old Roman Empire sitting crowned 
 upon the grave thereof" be true or not, it is 
 worth remembering that at Rome was struck 
 the treaty which through all these centuries 
 has welded Church and State. 
 
 But the conviction of the necessity of such 
 a compact, or at least of its great value, has 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOBLEM. 121 
 
 by no means been confined to the Roman 
 Catholic section of Christendom. At the 
 time of the Reformation the countenance 
 and aid of the State was sought with perhaps 
 equal zeal by both parties. Neither side was 
 quite ready to disclaim the assistance of the 
 arm of flesh. Rome, since she left the Cata- 
 combs, had always leaned more or less heav- 
 ily on that support, and the leaders of the re- 
 forming movement feared that without some 
 such shelter the fruits of their victories would 
 be insecure. 
 
 Accordingly at that momentous epoch 
 there sprang up all over Protestant Europe 
 those forms of national religion known as 
 u Establishments," and through them the va- 
 rious governments undertook to guarantee to 
 their subjects the benefits and privileges of a 
 pure Christianity. The establishments took 
 shape according to the temper and bias of 
 their framers. In some of them the principle 
 was accepted that the Church is a society 
 subject to the State, and the creature of its 
 laws. This view of the matter degrades the 
 Christian ministry to the level of what has 
 been satirically called "a moral police." 
 
 In our mother country the better ground 
 was taken that the Church is a society dis- 
 
122 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 tinct from the State, capable of entering into 
 partnership with it, but still retaining, even 
 during the continuance of the compact, a sep- 
 arate identity. 1 
 
 1 M. Guizot gives the following compendious summary of 
 the possible relations between Church and State: — 
 
 " 1st. The State is subordinate to the Church. In the moral 
 point of view, in the chronological order itself, the Church pre- 
 cedes the State. The Church is the first society, superior, eter- 
 nal. Civil society is nothing more than the consequence. It is 
 to the spiritual power that sovereignty belongs of right. The 
 temporal power should merely act as its instrument. 
 
 "2d. It is not the State which is in the Chhurc, but the Church 
 which is in the State. It is the State which rules the land, 
 which makes war, which levies taxes, governs the external 
 destinies of the citizens. It is for the State to give to the re- 
 ligious society the form and constitution which best accord 
 with the interests of general society. Whenever creeds cease 
 to be individual, whenever they give birth to associations, 
 these come within the cognizance and authority of the tempo- 
 ral power, the only veritable power in a State. 
 
 " 3d. The Church ought to be independent, unnoticed in the 
 State. The State has nothing to do with her. The temporal 
 power ought to take no cognizance of religious creeds; it 
 should let them approximate or separate — let them go on and 
 govern themselves as they think best; it has no right, no oc- 
 casion, to interfere in their affairs. 
 
 " 4th. The Church and the State are distinct societies, it is 
 true; but they are at the same time close neighbors, and are 
 nearly interested in one another. Let them live separate, but 
 not estranged. Let them keep up an alliance on certain con- 
 ditions, each living to itself, but each making sacrifices for the 
 other; in case of need, each lending the other its support."- 
 Hi&t. of Civ. in France. Lect. III. 
 
 In the above classification, which seems to be exhaustive, 
 (1) represents the Papal, (2) the Erastian, (3) the American, 
 and (4) the English theor}^. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 123 
 
 But ever since the day when these adjust- 
 ments were first determined, the mind of 
 Protestant Christendom has chafed and fret- 
 ted under them. Spiritual men have felt the 
 truth of our Lord's saying, " My Kingdom is 
 not of this world," 1 and have perceived the 
 
 1 See a Sermon upon this text, entitled The Roman Coun- 
 cil, lately preached before the University of Oxford, by the 
 Rev. J. B. Mozley , B. D. The line of thought held in the Ser- 
 mon is in many respects so like the one followed in this paper 
 that the author feels bound to say that at the time of writing 
 he had not seen any report of Canon Mozley's words. 
 
 But even the most clear-headed of English Churchmen, 
 however much they may dislike some features of the Estab- 
 lishment, shrink, with the national dislike of change, from ac- 
 cepting that original status of the Church in which she was 
 utterly and entirely independent of the Civil Power. Thus 
 Canon Mozley guards his strong statements about the distinct 
 scopes and aims of Church and State with some limiting words 
 against an absolute separation between the two ; and unless 
 Mr. Gladstone has very recently changed his mind he also, 
 while standing on the ruins of the Irish Establishment, still 
 believes in Establishments as desirable under some circum- 
 stances. Here are his words : — 
 
 " I can hardly believe that even those, including as they do 
 so many men upright and able, who now contend on principle 
 for the separation of the Church from the State, are so deter- 
 mined to exalt their theorem to the place of a universal truth, 
 that they ask us to condemn the whole of that process, by 
 which, as the gospel spread itself through the civilized world, 
 Christianity became incorporated with the action of civil au- 
 thority, and with the frame-work of public law. In the course of 
 human history, indeed, we perceive little of unmixed evil, and 
 
 far lessof universal good But Christ died for the race; 
 
 and those who notice the limited progress of conversion in the 
 world until alliance with the civil authority gave to His re- 
 
124 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 impolicy, as well as the difficulty of adminis- 
 tering under the same forms and usages the 
 things of Caesar and the things of God. An 
 impulse in the same direction has come also 
 from those who are hostile to the Christian 
 faith, and who desire nothing so much as to 
 see the last of the Church of Christ. They 
 
 ligion a wider access to the attention of mankind, may be in- 
 clined to doubt whether, without that alliance, its immeasur- 
 able and inestimable social results would ever have been at- 
 tained. Allowing for all that may be justly urged against 
 the danger of mixing secular motives with religious adminis- 
 tration, and above all against the intrusion of force into the 
 domain of thought, I for one cannot desire that Constantine 
 in the government of the Empire, that Justinian in the forma- 
 tion of its code of laws, that Charlemagne in refounding So- 
 ciety, or that Elizabeth in the crisis of the English Reforma- 
 tion, should have acted on the principle that the State and the 
 Church in themselves are separate or alien powers, incapable 
 of coalition." — J- Chapter of Autobiography. BytheEt. Hon. 
 W. E. Gladstone. M. P., pp. 58, 59. 
 
 But can Mr. Gladstone deny the truth of the following : — 
 " You may bring about many wonderful things through the 
 pliable and elastic constitution of the British Empire, but there 
 is one thing which by its very nature is an impossibility to 
 bring about even by an act of Parliament. 
 
 " It is this. That two powers should combine to govern a 
 people in a united religion, which powers themselves are dis- 
 united in opinion as to what such religion should be. And 
 especially when one of these powers, holding the sword and 
 virtually having the regulation of the machinery of the other, 
 is in itself composed of an heterogeneous mass of accidental 
 men fluctuating from year to year, and held together by no 
 one bond of faith, not even of Christianity." — State Inter- 
 ference in Matters Spiritual ; Bennett's Preface to the Frag- 
 ment by Hurrell Froude. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 125 
 
 are willing enough to have her die an easy 
 death. Perhaps they would rather prefer 
 that her end should not be violent. But 
 gently or roughly she must somehow be put 
 out of the way, and the first step toward this 
 end seems to them to be the withdrawal of 
 Government support. In the event, it may 
 be seen, that so far from being put out of the 
 way, the Church, when rid of that entan- 
 gling friendship of the world which is " en- 
 mity with God," is more in the way than 
 ever. 
 
 To these opposite but conspiring causes it 
 is due that there exists throughout Europe 
 to-day a growing public sentiment in favor 
 of the abolition of the union between Church 
 and State. Among Roman Catholics, this 
 sentiment takes the shape of opposition to the 
 temporal power of the Pope. With Protes- 
 tants, the cry is " Disestablishment." Sub- 
 stantially, it is one and the same thought that 
 is seething in the minds of both communions. 
 
 But it is to be remembered that in our own 
 country this public sentiment has been antici- 
 pated by about one hundred years. Here in 
 America we have the accomplished fact be- 
 fore our eyes. One of the earliest fruits of 
 the Revolution, and certainly one of its most 
 
126 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 noteworthy results, was the declaration con- 
 tained in the first amendment to the Consti- 
 tution of the United States : — 
 
 "Congress shall make no law respecting 
 an establishment of religion ." 
 
 In this short sentence lies wrapped the 
 secret of our national destiny; and on the 
 wisdom or unwisdom of this decision of the 
 fathers hinges the well-being of their chil- 
 dren's children. This is a strong statement; 
 some will be disposed to call it a wild one. 
 The popular mind judges of the compara- 
 tive importance of issues by the noise that 
 is made over them, and because less is said 
 and written about our religious, than about 
 our political future, it is very generally sup- 
 posed that the former will take care of itself. 
 But in reality, slow as men may be to admit 
 it, the religious vastly overtops in dignity and 
 in import the secular question. History, like 
 nature, works some of its grandest processes 
 in silence ; and even if no single word of 
 prophecy were lifted, it would still be true 
 that our destiny as a people is to be mainly 
 determined by the mould into which our 
 Christianity shall be cast. 
 
 Let us not shrink, then, from facing one of 
 the first conditions of the American problem, 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 127 
 
 which is this, that our Goverment rests in 
 theory, and must eventually rest in practice, 
 upon a purely secular basis. 
 
 We are as yet a Christian people, and we 
 have a right to say that we live in a Christian 
 land, simply because the majority of the pop- 
 ulation are nominally of the Christian faith. 
 But we have no right to say that we live un- 
 der a Christian government, for Christ and 
 His religion are alike unknown to that instru- 
 ment which alone gives the government its 
 authority, — the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 To be sure, there never has been any civil 
 government in the world that has fully de- 
 served the epithet " Christian," for the plain 
 reason that there never has been a govern- 
 ment willing to incorporate the golden rule 
 into the law of nations. But then, a great 
 many governments have been anxious to be 
 considered Christian ; they have professed 
 allegiance to the Christian faith, and in a de- 
 gree at least, have lent themselves to the sup- 
 port of Christian ideas. Our government 
 does not even care to be reckoned Christian. 
 It cannot be called an irreligious government, 
 for it permits religions of whatever sort to go 
 on their way unmolested, so that they refrain 
 from molesting others. But a Christian gov- 
 
128 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 ernment ours certainly is not, for there is 
 nothing in its structure to prevent either In- 
 fidels, Jews, or Mohammedans from adminis- 
 tering it throughout. 
 
 There still linger among the usages of 
 our governmental system some traces of the 
 old concordat between Church and State. 
 Houses of Congress, local legislatures, and 
 courts of justice are opened with prayer. 
 The Bible is more or less read in the public 
 schools. Presidents and Governors issue an- 
 nual Proclamations of Thanksgiving to Al- 
 mighty God, Chaplains are appointed in the 
 Army and Navy. On one of the less pre- 
 cious of our coins are stamped the words, 
 "In God we trust." 
 
 Many persons take comfort from the 
 thought that these things indicate a certain 
 Christian complexion still clinging to the 
 Government. 
 
 It is a feeble solace. These vestiges of 
 Christianity, as we may call them, are printed 
 on the sand. The tide has only to crawl up 
 a few inches further to wash them clean away. 
 There is nothing in the theory of the Repub- 
 lic that makes such usages an essential part 
 of the national life. They rest for the most 
 part upon the precarious tradition of colonial 
 days ; or if on statute law, what is statute law 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 129 
 
 but the creature of temporary majorities ? 
 The moment popular opinion sets against 
 them, all these relics of an established religion 
 must go by the board. They are not the 
 natural fruit of our system ; they are but re- 
 minders of an old order of things that has 
 passed away ; fossils imbedded in the rock on 
 which the existing structure stands. One by 
 one they will probably be chipped out and set 
 aside as curiosities. 
 
 If any one doubts the soundness of this 
 reasoning, nothing is easier than to put it to 
 a crucial test. Suppose it should come to 
 pass, through the silent working of commer- 
 cial and industrial causes, that the majority 
 of the population in some one of our States 
 should be unexpectedly found to be non- 
 Christian, and not only non-Christian, but 
 strongly anti-Christian. Such a supposition 
 is certainly in these days an admissible one. 
 Now, would the Governor of such a State, 
 being himself a Christian, have any right to 
 issue a proclamation calling upon the people 
 to assemble on a given day and render thanks 
 to God " through Jesus Christ our Lord " ? 
 Or, to make the case still clearer, would he 
 have the right to do this in the face of a pro- 
 test signed by a majority of the voters of the 
 
 9 
 
130 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 commonwealth ? No. The very first princi- 
 ples of our social system forbid it. The Chris- 
 tian minority would have to succumb in such 
 a case without delay. We have no right to 
 accept the law of majorities when it makes 
 for us, and reject it when it makes against us. 
 But it may be said that the magistrate, as a 
 Christian, is bound to use his utmost efforts to 
 bring the unbelieving community to a better 
 mind. So he is bound, no doubt ; but it is as 
 a private Christian citizen, and not as a mag- 
 istrate, he must do it. He cannot convert 
 the population by proclamation. Nay, nat- 
 ural justice forbids that he should even try. 
 Any other view of the case must of necessity 
 land us in confusion. 
 
 A year or two ago some very sanguine 
 persons set on foot a movement which had for 
 its object the incorporation into the national 
 Constitution of an article recognizing the 
 truth of Christianity. It is too late. The 
 stars in their courses fight against so forlorn 
 a hope. 
 
 The truth is, theories of government re- 
 duce themselves in the last analysis to two, 
 the paternal and the utilitarian schemes. 1 1 
 
 1 Socialism may perhaps claim to be reckoned a tertium 
 quid, the fraternal in distinction from the paternal theory. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 131 
 
 Under the paternal system, a government is 
 responsible for the well-being of the subject 
 people in all respects, socially, educationally, 
 religiously. The very name we give the the- 
 ory tells the whole story. Government is 
 the father of a family. The father knows 
 the children's wants better than they know 
 them themselves. He chooses for them their 
 sports, their studies, their companions, their 
 prayers. With such a theory of government 
 as this an established religion is of course 
 easily and naturally reconcilable. 
 
 But it is otherwise with the utilitarian 
 scheme. That credits the people governed 
 with more robustness, treats them as grown 
 men, and leaves it to them to decide for 
 themselves what they will choose and what 
 they will refuse. A utilitarian government 
 professes to provide for the temporal well- 
 being of all the governed. It professes no 
 more. It cannot undertake to guarantee 
 spiritual blessings, because people differ so 
 very widely as to what those blessings are, 
 and how they are to be secured. 
 
 Now we in America have chosen the utili- 
 tarian scheme. We have done it deliber- 
 ately and with our eyes open. Unless we 
 are prepared to agitate for revolution, and 
 
132 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 to tear our social order up by the roots, we 
 must continue in the path to which we have 
 plainly committed ourselves. 
 
 Moreover, it is evident that the drift of the 
 whole civilized world is in the same direc- 
 tion as our own. If we determine to attempt 
 stemming the current, we must count upon 
 opposing not merely a national tendency, but 
 an oecumenical one. Let us think twice be- 
 fore we make up our minds that this is nec- 
 essary. 
 
 It may be that, in thus spending our 
 strength upon a despairful effort at opposi- 
 tion, we should really be found fighting against 
 God. For aught we know, this world-wide 
 movement may have caught its impulse from 
 His hand, and may be working out His pur- 
 poses. Why take it for granted in advance, 
 that no good can possibly come out of a 
 mighty change of which we do not see as 
 yet even the beginning of the end ? What if 
 the foundations of the American social system 
 were laid by men who, as it is sometimes 
 boastfully, and sometimes tauntingly, and 
 sometimes mournfully declared were no Chris- 
 tians ? An old restorer of temple ruins has 
 reminded us that it is possible for our God to 
 turn a "curse into a blessing." 1 The gifts 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 2. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 133 
 
 of unbelieving minds were well employed, if 
 they aided, albeit unwittingly, to clear the 
 ground for the better upbuilding of Christ's 
 Church. 
 
 And here lies just the point which the 
 writer is aiming to bring out into distinctness. 
 The ground is cleared, — cleared as it never 
 has been before. The Church has, at last, 
 full freedom to do her best. Some may think 
 that it is with a great sum she has. obtained 
 this freedom. Be it so, the freedom is hers : 
 and for it she has to thank those who in the 
 interest of secular government cut the knot 
 of Church and State. Why, then, should we 
 not as Christians frankly accept the fact that 
 human government is everywhere renouncing 
 its diviner functions, and see whether in this 
 very abdication there be not a blessing hid ? 
 We ought to have faith enough in our holy 
 religion honestly to believe, and boldly to say, 
 that all it need ask is " a fair field and no 
 favor." This amount of concession, if jus- 
 tice can ever be called concession, a utilitarian 
 government cannot well refuse, and more 
 than this we should be foolish to expect. 
 
 Now let us not fear to face the very stern- 
 est conclusions that can be fairly wrung out 
 of our premises. It is true that no social the- 
 
134 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 ory is ever carried out in real life with rigor- 
 ous logical consistency. But suppose this 
 American theory should be so carried out to 
 its utmost possible limit, what then ? Gov- 
 ernment would become, in such an event, 
 simply a machine. 
 
 The functions of this machine would be the 
 preservation of social order, the protection of 
 life and property, the settlement of disputes, 
 the punishment of crime, together with such 
 matters as the coinage of money, the collec- 
 tion of taxes and imposts, the granting of 
 patent rights, and the transportation of the 
 mails. But the more perfect you make this 
 administrative mechanism, the wider does the 
 gap become between Church and State. And 
 it is well that it should be so. Mere living 
 by clock-work cannot satisfy vthe aspirations 
 of society, and therefore when men find that 
 civil government has been reduced to clock- 
 work and nothing else, they will look about 
 them to see whether there be not some social 
 organism capable of supplementing the defi- 
 ciencies of the secular machine. This sense 
 of want, this reaching after something better, 
 it is the high and sacred duty of the Christian 
 Church to meet. The food and drink that I 
 are withheld at the Capitol must be sought for 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 135 
 
 in the Temple. The more thoroughly the 
 State secularizes human life, the more ear- 
 nestly ought the Church to labor to spiritual- 
 ize and ennoble it. 
 
 Nor need there necessarily be the slightest 
 conflict in this partitioning of functions. It 
 may seem a terrible thing to degrade civil 
 government to the level of a dead machine, 
 but perhaps, when we have become accus- 
 tomed to so regarding it, we shall cease to be 
 shocked, for we shall then expect of govern- 
 ment no more than we expect of a machine. 
 Let it be understood that what the State 
 leaves undone, it is the Church's recognized 
 privilege to do. Under such circumstances 
 we need not feel obliged to call the State 
 atheistic any more than we call a Jacquard 
 loom atheistic. The State is simply non- 
 theistic, — that is all. 
 
 But it may be said that civil government 
 can never wholly free itself from a connec- 
 tion with moral and. even religious questions, 
 and that in this fact lies a fatal objection to 
 the view here advanced. The adjustment of 
 controversies between man and man, and the 
 custody of the marriage relation, for exam- 
 ple, must always, in the last resort, be left to 
 the State. With limitations, this is true ; 
 
136 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 but it is hard to see how the truth of it at all 
 damages the writer's argument. 
 
 The State exercised high moral functions 
 in the days of Pagan Rome, 1 and can exer- 
 cise them again without assistance from the 
 Church. There is an important distinction, 
 often overlooked, between morality and holi- 
 ness, between crime and sin. With morality 
 and crime a non-Christian government is per- 
 fectly competent to deal. Of sin and holi- 
 ness such a government knows, and cares to 
 know nothing at all. It is the duty of the 
 Church to furnish the State with a high and 
 pure standard of morality, and then to leave 
 with the State the responsibility of conform- 
 ing its action more or less closely to this stand- 
 ard. If the Church has a Christianizing in- 
 fluence on individual legislators and judges, 
 the results will of course appear in Chris- 
 tian legislation and Christian judicature. But 
 even supposing, wliat is most unlikely, that 
 the whole machinery of government were to 
 fall into the hands of infidels, the administra- 
 tion of justice and the enforcement of the laws 
 need not necessarily cease. There would still 
 be a social order, there would still be some 
 
 1 See Leckey, History of European Morals, chap, ii., where 
 this point is brought out with great distinctness. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 137 
 
 enforced standard, however meagre, of purity 
 of life. 
 
 But is the Christian religion, as we see it 
 in America to-day, prepared to take up, or 
 able to carry the heavy weight of responsi- 
 bility our national theory of civil government 
 throws down at its feet ? Is the Church of 
 Christ so organized in this land as to be equal 
 to the tremendous demand thus made upon 
 her energies ? We want a large-roofed, firmly 
 founded, spiritual dwelling-place, — a Home 
 of God, a shelter for a mighty people. Can 
 we have it ? Does such a fabric anywhere 
 stand ready ? If it does, where is it ? If it 
 does not, is there any hope? These are 
 questions which a believer in " invisible 
 Christianity " will set aside at once as super- 
 fluous. " We have the desired structure al- 
 ready," he will say, " in the united hearts of 
 all true Christian people, of whatever name or 
 sect." But those who hold to the need of 
 the " one Body " as well as the power of the 
 " one Spirit," will take another view of the 
 matter. To them it will seem that Chris- 
 tianity must be something more than a ghostly 
 presence in the land, if it is to do the work 
 mapped out for it. It must have hands and 
 arms and feet. Between these members 
 
138 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 there must be harmony of movement, and 
 over them unity of control. 
 
 We are thus brought face to face with the 
 American Problem, which is this : Given a 
 country constituted like ours, how is the 
 Church of Christ therein planted to achieve 
 and to maintain her proper unity ? 
 
 If we would handle the problem success- 
 fully, we must first of all ascertain what, in 
 mathematical language, are the exact " con- 
 ditions " of it. That is to say, we must have 
 a clear understanding both of the difficulties 
 we may expect to encounter and of the helps 
 upon which we have a right to count in our 
 progress towards a solution. 
 
 As to the difficulties, they are manifest 
 enough, and numerous enough ; and if we 
 thought we were working out the problem 
 unaided, we might well be excused for call- 
 ing them insuperable. 
 
 In the first place, we have a population 
 more strangely assorted than any other at 
 present comprised within the limits of a sin- 
 gle nationality. 1 
 
 Representatives of almost all the peoples 
 and the faiths of Europe are on the ground 
 in force. " Parthians, and Medes, and Elani- 
 
 1 With the possible exception of Russia. 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 139 
 
 ites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia " can 
 scarcely have been more unlike each other in 
 most respects than are the English, Irish, 
 German, African, Chinese, and Indian ele- 
 ments of our motley census. 
 
 Then, too, it must be remembered that the 
 three tendencies of religious thought which 
 have been already reviewed under the names 
 of Romanism, Puritanism, and Liberalism, 
 exist here not merely as tendencies, but as or- 
 ganized powers, each zealously devoted to the 
 w r ork of pushing its own interests. Hence, 
 it happens that every effort after a genuine 
 catholicity is almost sure to fall under the 
 suspicion of being a covert attempt at denom- 
 inational aggrandizement. 
 
 But the conditions of the problem are not 
 all of them discouraging. The believers in 
 American Catholicity have food for hope. In 
 weighing the significance of any given feature 
 of national life, it is well to notice the counter- 
 poise. That a marvellous diversity of origin 
 distinguishes our population cannot be denied, 
 but there is a fact of equal significance to be 
 set over against it. Notwithstanding our 
 strange mingling of bloods, there is one race 
 that contrives to keep, and for obvious rea- 
 sons always will keep the ascendency — the 
 
140 THE CHURCH-IDEA, 
 
 Anglo-Saxon. Doubtless, the Anglo-Saxon 
 mind has undergone, and in the future is 
 destined still further to undergo, important 
 changes here in America. But these changes 
 
 © © 
 
 have not been and will not be of such a kind 
 as to alter the foundations of our national 
 character. In our favorite virtues and our 
 favorite vices, in our judgments and our 
 tastes, we shall bear the impress of the An- 
 glo-Saxon mint forever. The wars of the 
 last century settled the question of ascendency 
 in America : and the recent failure of an at- 
 tempt to gain for the Latin races a fresh foot- 
 hold on our soil has only put the seal to that 
 settlement. 
 
 Our very language bears a constant witness 
 to this great fact of history. Were we really 
 as a people the conglomerate race we are some- 
 times supposed to be, we should at this mo- 
 ment be speaking a miserable patois of Eng- 
 glish, Spanish, and Dutch. As it is, English 
 is spoken in this country by all classes of so- 
 ciety with a far greater degree of uniformity, 
 and with fewer provincialisms, than in Great 
 Britain itself. It is not easy to overstate the 
 importance of this fact that we are an English- 
 speaking people. By this weapon of language 
 alone AnMo-Saxon ideas will be able to hold 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 141 
 
 America against all comers. Nor is it diffi- 
 cult to see the bearing which this dominancy 
 of race has upon our problem. The more 
 thoroughly educated our people become, the 
 more will they feel, through the medium of 
 literature, the influence of those great minds 
 that held England to her moorings in the day 
 of the disruption of Western Christendom. 
 This is not saying that Americans are des- 
 tined eventually to conform to the present 
 Anglican Church-system in its minutest de- 
 tails. That the writer entertains no such 
 foolish expectation, will, it is hoped, appear 
 in due time. But what is seriously claimed 
 is this: that certain leading ideas which in 
 time past guided the men of Anglo-Saxon 
 stock in the great controversy with Rome, 
 will in time future guide the men in whose 
 veins the same blood still runs. The Cath- 
 olic Church of America will doubtless have 
 something peculiarly American about its 
 build ; but at the same time it will assuredly 
 bear a closer resemblance to an English 
 home than to either an Italian palazzo or a 
 French chateau. 
 
 There is another consideration, quite apart 
 from this question of race, which must also 
 be set down on the hopeful side in the dis- 
 
142 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 cussion of our problem. Americans are an 
 intensely practical people. Endowed with a 
 large allowance of common sense, fertile in 
 expedients, and prompt in action, they are 
 not apt to be long tolerant of a proved ab- 
 surdity. Only let the religious portion of our 
 community become once persuaded that it is 
 a palpable absurdity to call the existing jum- 
 ble of denominations, followings, and sects 
 Christian unity, and they will work night and 
 day, and pray day and night, until something 
 better is brought to pass. It so happens that 
 there has been a great deal in the experience 
 of our national life during the past ten years 
 to make transparent the folly of calling dis- 
 union union, and disorder order. We have 
 learned that for all practical purposes the 
 unity of a people is dependent on the visible 
 unity of its government. We have learned 
 that the efficiency of an army is dependent on 
 the thoroughness of its organization and the 
 harmonious working of its parts. Now the 
 Church is the People of God and the Army 
 of Christ. It seems scarcely necessary to say 
 more — the illustration enforces itself. 
 
 Thus much for the statement of the prob- 
 lem and its conditions. It remains to discuss 
 the ways and means to a solution. This must 
 
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 143 
 
 be reserved for another chapter. Meanwhile, 
 one word of encouragement to those timid 
 souls who can see nothing in the present state 
 of things but chaos, and nothing in the future 
 but despair. 
 
 It is written in a certain place that once, 
 when the earth was without form and void, 
 and darkness was upon the face of the deep, 
 the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
 waters, and God said, " Let there be light." 
 Can it be that the breath which could thus 
 mould and shape a formless universe is unable 
 to give unity and order to a great family of 
 living souls ? Can it be that He who has 
 promised His Spirit to the' Church, will not 
 at the right moment speak the word and 
 lighten our darkness as He lightened that ? 
 It is the especial work of the Holy Spirit to 
 draw unity out of confusion. Babel was 
 man's work, but Pentecost was God's. Is it 
 asking too much of Him who has bidden us 
 ask what we will, if we pray that when the 
 Church is " minished and brought low," God 
 will at last bestow on her His inestimable gift 
 of peace ? 
 
144 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 VII. 
 
 RECONCILIATION. 
 
 When an intelligent man not wholly for- 
 getful of the past of Christendom, nor wholly 
 blind to its present estate, stands up in his 
 place and solemnly says, " I believe in the 
 Holy Catholic Church," wdiat does he mean ? 
 
 Does he mean that in his judgment the 
 particular household of faith to which he is 
 attached is, in distinction from and to the ex- 
 clusion of all other communions calling them- 
 selves Christian, the sole depository and trus- 
 tee of the blessings promised in Holy Scrip- 
 ture to the Church ? He may mean this, 
 and we must not too hastily refuse him his 
 epithet of intelligent if he does. Some of the 
 most cultivated and devout minds of modern 
 times have given in their adhesion to this 
 view, and we certainly shall not win them to 
 any other by suggesting that in doing so they 
 took leave of their senses. But is this ex- 
 clusive interpretation of the language of the 
 Creed, the only one consistent with honesty 
 
RECONCILIATION. 145 
 
 and right reason ? Might not our intelligent 
 worshipper say, and in nine cases out of ten 
 would he not say, that his faith in the Holy 
 Catholic Church was largely of the sort de- 
 fined in the Epistle to the Hebrews as " the 
 substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
 of things not seen ? " If, upon making this 
 confession, he were to be charged with pure 
 idealism, with being a member of the Church 
 of the Future, a visionary, an ecclesias- 
 tical Quixote, he could answer, " Nay. I 
 gladly admit that the Church has an histor- 
 ical past as well as a possible future. Other 
 foundation can no man lay than that is laid. 
 I would not build upon a cloud. Only I must 
 refuse to call the fabric perfect, so long as I 
 see the ground strewn with stones evidently 
 cut for the wall and waiting to be lifted into 
 place. In saying, then, that I believe in the 
 Holy Catholic Church, I confess to faith in a 
 partly realized and partly unrealized plan." 1 
 
 1 " Where," asks the English Koman Catholic, Edmund 
 Ffoulkes, — "where, indeed, is the part of Christendom seri- 
 ously purporting to call itself the Catholic Church in these 
 days? Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Episcopal, Ortho- 
 dox, or Presbyterian, all in their degree seem influenced by 
 some hidden spell to abstain from arrogating to themselves, 
 or attributing to each other, the epithet of* Catholic,' without 
 qualification, as it is applied to the Church in the Creed." — 
 The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? p. 15. 
 10 
 
146 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Whether this position be tenable or not, a 
 strong argument in its favor might be drawn 
 from a recent chapter in our national history. 
 When in the darkest days of the long struggle 
 between North and South, a man said, " I be- 
 lieve in the Union, and am ready to die for 
 it," was there anything necessarily contra- 
 dictory or inherently absurd in his confession 
 of faith? There certainly was a seeming 
 contradiction and an apparent absurdity. Al- 
 most all the outward and tangible evidences 
 of unity had gone to the winds. In not a 
 single State south of a certain boundary-line 
 was the authority of the General Government 
 acknowledged. Foreign critics looking on de- 
 clared, almost with unanimity, that the Re- 
 public was at an end. An English scholar 
 issued the first volume of a ponderous w T ork 
 on the "History of Federal Government 
 from the Foundation of the Achaean League 
 to the Disruption of the United States.' 
 And yet, in the face of all this, hundreds 
 of thousands were found saying, and say- 
 ing honestly, " We believe in the Union. 
 Were they mad ? To some they might 
 have seemed so. The Union in which they 
 declared their faith was certainly, for the 
 time, most seriously broken. And yet, af- 
 ter all, those men were something better 
 
 I 
 
RECONCILIATION. 147 
 
 than mere dreamers. They had a foundation 
 for their confidence, and they knew it. All 
 was not swept away. The ancient Consti- 
 tution stood. The continuity of Republican 
 Government survived. The capital too, with 
 all its outward and visible symbols of legiti- 
 macy, — the national archives, the halls of leg- 
 islation, the seats of executive and administra- 
 tive power, — this remained. In a word, there 
 was a centre, a definite and tangible centre, 
 around which to rally. And thus, at last, 
 what had seemed to be a hoping against hope 
 grew into fruition, and faith was justified. 
 
 Is the cause of Church unity in this coun- 
 try any more desperate to-day than was the 
 cause of civil unity seven years ago ? 
 
 In the earlier chapters of this book the ques- 
 tion of Catholicity was discussed in abstract 
 terms. This was necessary as a preliminary 
 step to any satisfactory handling of practical 
 issues. But we have now come down from 
 the region of pure ideas into the denser air 
 of every-day experience. We find ourselves 
 face to face with the problem of Catholicity 
 as it presents itself in this new world we call 
 America. Here, if anywhere on earth, a 
 Church of the Reconciliation ought to be 
 among the things possible. Nowhere else can 
 
148 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 
 
 the constructive effort be made with so fair a 
 promise of success. Religion is here, as we 
 have seen, unhampered by any perilous alli- 
 ance with the civil power ; the atoms of social 
 life are in easy motion, ready to be crystallized 
 into almost any conceivable form ; and if Chris- 
 tian unity without coercion is anything better 
 than an idle dream, there is nothing to forbid 
 our bringing it, with God's help, to pass. 
 While, therefore we seem to be narrowing the 
 broad question of Catholicity when we thus 
 fence it within national limits and subject it to 
 local conditions, we are in reality only putting 
 to the test principles which have an interest 
 and an application as wide as the Christian 
 world. 
 
 First of all, then, who are to be recognized 
 as forming what may be called the constit- 
 uency of the Catholic Church of America ? 
 Dare we give a narrower definition than St. 
 Paul ? He said to his Galatian converts, 
 " As many of you as have been baptized into 
 Christ, have put on Christ." Baptism w r ith 
 water, administered " in the Name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost," with the intention of engrafting the 
 person baptized into the Christian Church, 
 does in itself confer citizenship therein. So 
 
RECONCILIATION. 149 
 
 the King decreed : so has the Realm received. 
 The theology of Rome itself, strictly as it 
 guards the pale of the Church, does not deny 
 this privilege of birthright to any of the bap- 
 tized, even though they may have received 
 it from what is judged an heretical source. 1 
 
 It may be objected that such a loose canon 
 as this would turn the Church of the Recon- 
 ciliation into an indiscriminate rabble. Thou- 
 sands and thousands who care not a straw for 
 religion could easily prove the simple fact of 
 baptism. But it must be observed that we 
 have not yet come to the question of disci- 
 pline. It is one thing to have a right of 
 membership in the Church, and quite another 
 to be in the enjoyment of the privileges of 
 communion. 2 The point under discussion 
 now is what constitutes citizenship, not what 
 
 1 Here is the official and definitive language of the Coun- 
 cil of Trent: " Si quis dixerit Baptismum qui etiam datum ab 
 haereticis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, cum in- 
 tentione faciendi quod facit Ecclesia, non esse verum Bap- 
 tism, anathema sit." (Sess. Vll., Canon IX.) It is to be 
 regretted that this anathema is sometimes in practice disre- 
 garded by those whose consciences it was meant to bind. 
 
 2 Nothing is more common than to find these two things 
 confused in people's minds. Perhaps a majority of American 
 Protestants grow up with the notion that admission to the 
 Holy Communion constitutes membership of the Church, and 
 yet the distinction between membership and communion is 
 one that is absolutely essential to a clear understanding of the 
 nature of Church life. 
 
150 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 constitutes good citizenship. We are con- 
 sidering how from an abnormal, we are to get 
 back into a normal state of things. 
 
 Let ns recur to the analogy of our late 
 civil war. The theory held by the General 
 Government, from first to last, was that the 
 people of the South, notwithstanding all that 
 had happened, continued to be citizens. 
 They were alienated citizens, citizens out of 
 their right relations with their fellows, but cit- 
 izens none the less, and as such to be treated. 
 This was very different from the position taken 
 towards the so-called State Organizations 
 which these same alienated citizens had made. 
 The supposed States were not recognized at 
 all, or only in so far as certain amenities of 
 war required it. In other words, while the 
 right to construct new governments was de- 
 nied, the inherent right of citizenship con- 
 ferred by birth on American soil or by natu- 
 ralization under American laws was admitted. 
 By a similar reasoning it is perfectly consist- 
 ent to deny the possibility of there being ten 
 or twenty churches within the limits of a sin- 
 gle nationality, while at the same time we 
 admit that every individual member of these 
 numerous societies has, in virtue of his bap- 
 tism, a right of citizenship in the One Church 
 
RECONCILIATION. 151 
 
 Catholic of Christ. If it be asked, — Why 
 then fret ourselves about Church unity, when 
 all the baptized are already members of the 
 One Body ? the answer lies in another ques- 
 tion equally to the point, — Why did we fret 
 ourselves about national unity, when all, both 
 North and South, were confessedly citizens 
 by birth ? 
 
 Starting from the broad vantage-ground 
 thus given us by a generous definition of 
 Church-membership, we have next to seek 
 soihe one, well-understood, central position 
 fitted to serve as a rallying-point for the scat- 
 tered army of the Cross. The necessity of 
 some definite centre of unity is demonstrable. 
 The way to produce a beautiful effect in 
 crystallization is to hang up by a thread in 
 the liquid that contains the future crystal in 
 solution a solid piece of stone or metal. To 
 this, the minute particles, as they pass out of 
 the state of solution, attach themselves ; and 
 the final result is a marvellously symmetrical 
 whole, in which the planes and points and 
 angles seem all to have been arranged accord- 
 ing to a preconceived idea. Similarly, when- 
 ever any social organization has become dis- 
 persed, or thrown into solution there is needed 
 for its re-collection a firm core or nucleus about 
 
152 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 which the returning parts may group them- 
 selves. To leave the chemical and to revert to 
 the architectural figure, the first condition of 
 the problem of American Catholicity is a de- 
 finite foundation. Moreover, this foundation 
 must have an historical character ; its roots 
 must be driven deep down into the farthest 
 past ; it cannot be the creature of to-day. It 
 would be simply absurd to call a general con- 
 vention of the baptized, and vote the Church 
 of the Reconciliation into being. Political 
 parties and benevolent societies and religious 
 sects can be made in that way, but a great 
 national Church never. Something stronger 
 than an improvised platform of principles is 
 needed to hold up the House of God. Her 
 spires and turrets soar forever into the clear 
 air of the Future. Her foundations are upon 
 the holy hills. She is built into and upon 
 the Past. 
 
 Two religious systems, and only two, offer 
 to the Christian people of this country an 
 historical basis of unity. These are respec- 
 tively the Anglican and the Roman Churches. 
 Both trace their lineage to Apostolic times. 
 Both are especially solicitous to retain the 
 grand old epithet of " Catholic." Not a few 
 thoughtful people are of opinion that between 
 
RECONCILIATION. 153 
 
 these and a third power, namely, Religious 
 Liberalism, the real battle of our future lies. 
 
 But in this discussion about foundations, 
 Liberalism may be cast out of the account ; 
 for whatever else may be said in its behalf, 
 nobody pretends that Liberalism has any his- 
 torical basis of Church unity to propose. 
 
 Here then are two churches, one of An- 
 glo-Saxon, the other of Italian stock, each 
 maintaining, and each maintaining truly, that 
 it can offer to the American people an histor- 
 ical basis of unity. It is by no means certain 
 that the nation will choose either of * the two; 
 but it is not hazarding much to say that if 
 there is ever to be such a thing as a United 
 Church of America, it,will rest either upon 
 an Anglican or a Roman foundation. It 
 would be difficult to exaggerate the impor- 
 tance of the choice. To be sure, nothing is 
 more common than for half-informed people 
 to combine with ill-intentioned people in re- 
 presenting that after all there is not much to 
 choose between these two foundations. Very 
 many worthy Christians regard Anglicanism 
 as only a modified form of Romanism, — a 
 Romanism robbed perhaps of some tinsel 
 and glitter, and in a measure purified, but in 
 its inner nature and essence Romanism still. 
 
154 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 And so, also, nothing is more common than 
 to hear the case put as if there were really- 
 only two instead of three alternatives be- 
 tween which to choose. 
 
 " Atheism or Ultramontanism," said La- 
 mennais, and there are many who delight to 
 echo the sentiment on this side of the Atlan- 
 tic. But we are not Frenchmen ; and so 
 long as we keep our eyes open, we shall not 
 be snared by " the falsehood of extremes." 
 When it has been proved that the Papal Su- 
 premacy, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, 
 the invocation of saints, tran substantial on, 
 the denial of the cup to the laity, masses for 
 the souls in purgatory, indulgences, and the 
 confessional are matters of no moment, then, 
 but not till then, shall we know that between 
 the Roman and the Anglican positions there 
 is not much to choose. 
 
 The truth is, Anglicanism is the only form 
 of Christianity of which Rome is seriously 
 and thoroughly afraid. In the national 
 Church of the Anglo-Saxon she sees a plant 
 of hardy growth, and one which all her blasts 
 do not suffice to wither. 
 
 " We gave the Protestant religion five 
 centuries to run," once said an ardent Roman 
 Catholic ; " three of the five are over, and 
 
RECONCILIATION. - 155 
 
 before the other two have passed, the whole 
 thing will be reabsorbed." Yes ; three cen- 
 turies have gone, but the Anglican Commun- 
 ion has not gone, and will not go. It never 
 was more vigorous in a spiritual sense than 
 now. It stands, as Wellington's squares of 
 infantry stood at Waterloo, firm, patient, 
 dogged, if we must call it so, but true, — true 
 as steel. 
 
 We have come to a turning-point in the 
 progress of our argument, to a question in 
 which all the lines of thought upon which we 
 have been moving meet. It is this : What 
 are the essential, the absolutely essential feat- 
 ures of the Anglican position ? When it is 
 proposed to make Anglicanism the basis of a 
 Church of the Reconciliation, it is above all 
 things necessary to determine what Angli- 
 canism pure and simple is. The word brings 
 up before the eyes of some a flutter of sur- 
 plices, a vision of village spires and cathedral 
 towers, a somewhat stiff and stately company 
 of deans, prebendaries, and choristers, and 
 that is about all. But we greatly mistake if 
 we imagine that the Anglican principle has 
 no substantial existence apart from these ac- 
 cessories. Indeed, it is only when we have 
 stripped Anglicanism of the picturesque cos- 
 
156 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 tume which English life has thrown around 
 it, that we can fairly study its anatomy, or 
 understand its possibilities of power and 
 adaptation. 
 
 The Anglican principle and the Anglican 
 system are two very different things. The 
 writer does not favor attempting to foist the 
 whole Anglican system upon America ; while 
 yet he believes that the Anglican principle is 
 America's best hope. 
 
 At no time since the Reformation has the 
 Church of England been in actual fact the 
 spiritual home of the nation. A majority of 
 the people of Great Britain are to-day with- 
 out her pale. Could a system which has 
 failed to secure comprehensiveness on its 
 native soil, hope for any larger measure of 
 success in a strange land ? 
 
 But what if it can be shown that the An- 
 glican system has failed in just so far as it has 
 been untrue to the Anglican principle ? And 
 what if it can be shown that here in America 
 we have an opportunity to give that principle 
 the only fair trial it has ever had ? 
 
 The true Anglican position, like the City 
 of God in the Apocalypse, may be said to lie 
 foursquare. Honestly to accept that position 
 is to accept, — 
 
RECONCILIATION. 157 
 
 1st. The Holy Scriptures as the Word of 
 God. 
 
 2d. The Primitive Creeds as the Rule of 
 Faith. 
 
 3d. The two Sacraments ordained by 
 Christ Himself. 
 
 4th. The Episcopate as the key-stone of 
 Governmental Unity. 
 
 These four points, like the four famous for- 
 tresses of Lombardy, make " the Quadrilat- 
 eral " of pure Anglicanism. Within them 
 the Church of the Reconciliation may stand 
 secure. Because the English State-Church 
 has muffled these first principles in a cloud 
 of non-essentials, and has said to the people 
 of the land, " Take all this or nothing," she 
 mourns to-day the loss of half her children. 
 Only by avoiding the like fatal error can the 
 American branch of the Anglican Church 
 hope to save herself from becoming in effect, 
 whatever she may be in name, a sect. Only 
 by a wise discrimination between what can 
 and what cannot be conceded for the sake of 
 unity, is unity attainable. We will make, 
 therefore, the tour of the Quadrilateral. 
 
 I. The Holy Scriptures as the Word of 
 God. Anglicanism is happily pledged to no 
 special philosophy of inspiration. " It seems 
 
158 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 pretty generally agreed among thoughtful 
 men at present,' says Bishop Harold Browne, 
 " that definite theories of inspiration are doubt- 
 ful and dangerous." 1 A like wisdom framed 
 the sentence, already once quoted in these 
 papers, " Holy Scripture containeth all things 
 necessary to salvation : so that whatsoever is 
 not read therein, nor maybe proved thereby, 
 is not to be required of any man that it should 
 be believed as an article of the Faith, or be 
 thought requisite or necessary to salvation." 2 
 No doubt the living Bishop and the dead Re- 
 former had very different polemical purposes 
 in view when they wrote, but their words are 
 in admirable accord, notwithstanding. Holy 
 Scripture, according to the Anglican view, is 
 the treasure-house of God's revealed truth. 
 How far and in what precise manner the di- 
 vine and the human elements coexist there, it 
 is idle to surmise, because manifestly impossi- 
 ble to determine. It is enough to know that 
 in a sense peculiar and unique, differencing 
 it from all other books, the Bible is God's 
 word or message to us. The embassage of the 
 Son of God is evidently the subject of the 
 Scriptures. When the fact of this embassage 
 
 1 Aids to Faith : Essay vii. § 12. 
 
 2 XXXIX Articles. Art. vi. 
 
RECONCILIATION. 159 
 
 has been once acknowledged, all difficulties 
 • about inspiration fly to the winds. To the 
 mind convinced that the " Word was made 
 flesh," nothing seems more natural than that 
 God should have provided and protected the 
 memorial of so transcendent an event. 
 
 But the Church must have some guaran- 
 tee from its members that the cardinal truths 
 enshrined in Holy Scripture are indeed re- 
 ceived. Hence the necessity of a creed. It 
 is simply trifling with words to say that the 
 Scriptures are in themselves an all-sufficient 
 creed. They are too voluminous to be 
 grasped entire by any single mind, and even 
 if they could be so grasped, they would not 
 be a creed, for a creed is a summary of truths 
 thought to be essential, and it has never been 
 held that a knowledge of every minutest de- 
 tail of Scripture is essential to the well-being 
 of the soul. Scripture, like Nature, is a vast 
 field of research. The creed is gathered out 
 of Scripture, just as physical and chemical 
 " laws," so called, are gathered out of Nature, 
 that is, by the process of induction or the 
 careful comparison of part with part. A man 
 of science might as well say that Nature is 
 his knowledge, as a Christian that Scripture is 
 his creed. Scripture is, in its way, as inex- 
 
160 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 haustible as Nature. No man knows, or can 
 know thoroughly, either the one or the other. 
 Hence the dependence of the Church on — 
 II. T/ie Primitive Creeds as the Rule of 
 Faith. The principle of dogma is the corner- 
 stone not only of Church life but of all social 
 life whatever. Dogmas are simply first princi- 
 ples, and without some agreement upon first 
 principles the very beginnings of society are 
 impossible. One Sunday morning, last Sum- 
 mer, a North German fanatic fired a pistol- 
 shot at the officiating clergyman in one of the 
 principal churches of Berlin. He wished to put 
 an affront on Christianity, and he selected a 
 man against whom he bore no personal grudge 
 as the representative of the hated system. 
 When subsequently arraigned in court to an- 
 swer to the charge of intended murder, the 
 criminal pleaded Not Guilty, on the ground 
 that the human will is the slave of circum- 
 stances, and that he had only done what neces- 
 sity compelled. Had the judge condescended 
 to hold a metaphysical discussion with the ac- 
 cused, it is just possible that the latter might 
 have got the best of the argument. He cer- 
 tainly could have cited not a few eminent 
 philosophical authorities on his side. But in- 
 stead of opening a debate, the judge promptly 
 
RECONCILIATION. 161 
 
 acted upon the dogma, generally though not 
 universally received, that killing, or attempt- 
 ing to kill, is punishable, and sentenced the 
 poor man to a term of twelve years' im- 
 prisonment. 
 
 What the axioms of morality are to the 
 civil society, the State, certain primary beliefs 
 or dogmas are to the religious society, the 
 Church. It were as reasonable to ask the 
 Church to dispense with the one, as the 
 State to dispense with the other. Christian- 
 ity, as a religion, rests upon a basis of alleged 
 fact. Discredit this foundation, destroy peo- 
 ple's confidence in its strength, and the whole 
 fabric will tumble to the ground in a hun- 
 dredth part of the time it has taken to rear 
 it. When the Church renounces the prin- 
 ciple of dogma she will simply be commit- 
 ting suicide. 
 
 But granting the necessity of a creed, w x hat 
 ought to be the characteristic features of it ? 
 
 Conspicuously these three, Brevity, Defi- 
 niteness, Antiquity. 
 
 The Creed of Christendom must be short. 
 This is equally a necessity, although on dif- 
 ferent grounds, for the learned and the un- 
 learned. The least educated require a brief 
 confession of faith, because it is unreasonable 
 11 
 
162 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 to expect them to carry a long one in their 
 minds. The most highly educated require 
 the same, because, it is only upon a few points 
 that any large number of trained intellects 
 can ever be brought to an agreement. The 
 more the human mind is cultivated, so much 
 the greater power does it acquire of draw- 
 ing subtle distinctions and defining delicate 
 shades of difference. A creed that enters 
 into a great number of minute particulars is 
 a creed that invites opposition and makes 
 conflict inevitable. 
 
 The early Fathers and Doctors of the 
 Christian Church seem to have been pro- 
 foundly impressed with the soundness of this 
 position. It was not for lack of ability to 
 frame elaborate statements of theological 
 truth that they refrained from doing so. Fa- 
 miliar as they were with the refinements of 
 the Greek philosophy, they might easily have 
 contrived an intricate and highly subtilized 
 creed had they wished. But their wisdom 
 forbade it. They would not turn the Church 
 of the Reconciliation into a Church of the 
 Alienation, and so they kept their creed sim- 
 ple and short. 
 
 But as the years went on the passion for 
 accumulating dogma grew strong. New con- 
 
RECONCILIATION. 163 
 
 troversies provoked new definitions, and new 
 definitions newer controversies. Finally, as 
 the sun went down on the great battle of the 
 Reformation, both the contending parties en- 
 trenched themselves in very extended doctri- 
 nal earth-works ; the Roman Catholics in the 
 Decrees of the Council of Trent, and the 
 Creed of Pope Pius IV. ; the Protestants in 
 such symbolic documents as the Augsburg 
 Confession, the Heidelberg Confession, the 
 Westminster Confession, and the XXXIX 
 Articles of the Church of England. The time 
 has come to exchange these long-drawn creeds 
 for the briefer rule of faith that satisfied the 
 early Church. The exigencies of the six- 
 teenth century may have demanded com- 
 plexity, but the exigencies of the nineteenth 
 demand simplicity. The Church is in the 
 heat of a tremendous conflict, and her great 
 need is concentration of force. We may 
 learn a lesson in this matter from the striking 
 change that has, of late years, come over the 
 methods of naval warfare. Contrast an old- 
 fashioned line-of-battle ship, a three-decker 
 carrying seventy-five or a hundred guns, such 
 as you might see in a picture of La Hogue or 
 Trafalgar, and one of our modern iron-clads, 
 with its two or four or six ponderous pieces 
 
164 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 of ordnance. To a wholly inexperienced eye, 
 looking at the two in open ocean, it would 
 seem as if there could be no comparison in 
 point of power. How can that low-lying, 
 unpretentious, scantly-armed ship stand for a 
 moment against the huge Queen of the Sea, 
 with her over-hanging walls of oak, her triple 
 row of cannon, her eight hundred men ? 
 But power is with the few, in this case. 
 One single shot from the less conspicuous but 
 compacter ship, will, if well directed, do more 
 execution than a whole broadside from its 
 many- mouthed opponent. The moral of the 
 fable is not far to seek. The great doctrinal 
 need of our times may be compressed into a 
 single maxim, Heavy guns and few. 
 
 But let both parts of the maxim be kept 
 equally in mind. It is folly to diminish the 
 number of the guns unless at the same time we 
 increase the weight of the metal. The writer 
 would by no means favor holding to revealed 
 truth with a loose grasp. Dogma, well-de- 
 fined, sharply-cut dogma, is, as has been 
 already said, essential to the very existence 
 of the Church, and just in proportion to the 
 fewness of the required articles of faith ought 
 to be their distinctness. The great practi- 
 tioners have been those who have cured dis- 
 
RECONCILIATION. 165 
 
 eases with few remedies, but they would not 
 have been great practitioners had they used 
 no remedies at all. Special sins are but the 
 outcropping fruits of one all-pervasive sick- 
 ness of the soul. We do not need as many 
 medicines as there are sins to heal, but we 
 do need such few remedies as have always 
 proved themselves able to reach the underly- 
 ing cause of the complaint. 
 
 Definiteness, then, is a second requisite of 
 the universal creed, as indeed it may be 
 called the first requisite in the religious think- 
 ing of our times. There is far too much 
 haze, not to say fog, in the air for either com- 
 fort or health. Men crave certainty on some 
 points, and they are not satisfied until they 
 have it. And yet how much of the prevalent 
 teaching leaves those who receive it shiver- 
 ing in the mists that cling about the moun- 
 tain's sides, instead of leading them up into 
 the sharp but clear air of the summit. The 
 religious mind of to-day expects to be told, and 
 is willing to be told, that there are few things 
 it can know ; but what saddens it and sickens 
 it is to receive the message that there is noth- 
 ing about God or heaven it can know for 
 certain. By all means, what we do hold, let 
 us hold fast. 
 
166 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 The only other needful characteristic of 
 a universal Christian creed, besides brevity 
 and precision, is the venerableness that comes 
 with age. It is sometimes rashly said that 
 reverence for authority is gradually dying out 
 of the world altogether. Much that we see 
 in contemporary life and manners would seem 
 to give color to the gloomy prophecy. But 
 it cannot be. Human nature puts on a va- 
 riety of liveries in passing from one service 
 to another, but itself it cannot change : and 
 until human nature has undergone a radical 
 revolution, making it other than it is, there 
 need be no serious fear that the sense of rev- 
 erence for what is venerable will ever wholly 
 cease to show itself among men. The awe 
 we feel in looking on an ancient building, the 
 attachment we have for an old home, the pe- 
 culiar value we set upon an early and tried 
 friendship, these all bear witness to our in- 
 stinctive preference for what seems to be last- 
 ing over what we know to be transient. In 
 superficial matters we are fond of variety and 
 newness, but in all that most deeply affects 
 the real interests of life we value permanence, 
 and whatever seems to prove or promise per- 
 manence. A creed that is to commend it* 
 self to the confidence, and not merelv to the 
 
RECONCILIATION. 167 
 
 admiration of Christendom, must come backed 
 by the authority of the ages. The wisest 
 theologian alive cannot make such a creed to 
 order. No assembly of divines, however au- 
 gust, can compile it to-day. It must be 
 found, if found at all, among the inherited 
 treasures of the Church of God. 
 
 Can it be found ? Anglicanism says, Yes. 
 
 The " Primitive Creeds " are the two pop- 
 ularly called " the Apostles' Creed " and " the 
 Nicene Creed." The Apostles' Creed is of 
 unknown antiquity. It is one among various 
 similar versions of " the form of sound words " 
 which were in currency among the early 
 Christians. 
 
 The Nicene Creed is that statement of re- 
 ceived faith which was drawn up by the as- 
 sembled Bishops of the whole Church, as soon 
 as the cessation of persecutions made it possi- 
 ble for them to come together and bear wit- 
 ness to those things which had been " most 
 surely believed " from the beginning. 1 These 
 
 1 The date of the Council of Nice was A. d. 325. The clos- 
 ing sentences of the Creed, from the clause " I believe in the 
 Holy Ghost '' (with the exception of the words "and the 
 Son"), were added at the Council of Constantinople a. d. 381. 
 Of the Creed thus completed the Fourth General Council (a. 
 d. 451) decreed that it was " lawful for nobody to propose, that 
 is, compile, put together, hold, or teach others another faith. 
 Those who dared either to put together another faith, or pro- 
 
168 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 Bishops, it is to be observed, did not claim the 
 power of making dogma. They only set the 
 seal of their testimony on what they asserted 
 to have been always received in the Chris- 
 tian communities they severally represented. 
 In these Creeds, or rather in this Creed, 
 for the second is only a restatement of what 
 is contained by implication in the first, we 
 find centred all three of the attributes re- 
 quired, — brevity, definiteness, and venerable 
 authority. Both Creeds long antedate the 
 
 duce, teach, or deliver another symbol to any desirous of re- 
 turning to a knowledge of the truth from Hellenism, Juda- 
 ism, or any heresy whatsoever, were, if bishops or clergy, to 
 be deposed; if laymen, to be anathematized." — Canon of 
 Chalcedon, as quoted by Ffoulkes, The Church's Creed and 
 the Crown" 1 '& Creed? p. 5. 
 
 Near the end of his pamphlet the same writer says, 
 " Thirdly, what is of infinitely more importance to Christians 
 generally, desirous of living in peace and charity with their 
 brethren all the world over, no profession of faith would be re- 
 quired from any seeking to be admitted to communion to any 
 Church, but the Nicene Creed, according to the solemn import 
 of the Canon with which we commenced. When it was 
 passed, all the modern controversies on grace had been antic- 
 ipated by the followers of Pelagius, and there had been ques- 
 tions raised about the sacraments and rules of the Church sim- 
 ilar to these amongst which we live. And sfill the language 
 of that Canon is most emphatic : — ' Those coming over from 
 whatsoever heresy to the communion of the Church, are to be 
 made to subscribe to the Xicene Creed and no other.' .... 
 Plain Christians might therefore traverse the world with no 
 other passport to the Sacraments of the Church in all lands 
 than the Nicene Creed." — Ibid. p. 65. 
 
RECONCILIATION. 169 
 
 rise of the Papal power, and the origin of the 
 superstitious beliefs and usages against which 
 the Reformation was a protest. Hooker 
 speaks of the first as " that brief confession 
 of faith which hath been always a badge of 
 the Church, a mark whereby to discern Chris- 
 tian men from infidels and Jews." 1 
 
 Of the second it may be said that it differs 
 from the first chiefly in the more marked 
 exactness of its language with regard to the 
 Sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ. A truth 
 which, to quote Hooker again, is " contained, 
 but not opened in the former creed," is here 
 set forth in unmistakable terms. It would 
 seem as if the words " His only Son our Lord, 
 Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost," must 
 be just as decisive of Christ's true divinity as 
 the words that follow, " Born of the Virgin 
 Mary, .... suffered, .... was 
 crucified, dead and buried," are decisive of 
 His true humanity. But since there were 
 some who doubted, the Nicene Fathers deter- 
 mined so to define the dogma of the Incarna- 
 tion as to make it perfectly clear what they 
 held to be the immemorial belief of the 
 Church. Critics who stand, by their own 
 confession, quite beyond the pale of Chris- 
 
 1 Ecclesiastical Polity, Book v. chap. xlii. § 2. 
 
170 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 tianity have no difficulty in seeing that this 
 dogma is really what distinguishes the Church 
 from Judaism and Islam. Certainly we who 
 stand within the pale ought to be thankful 
 for a Creed which enunciates the central 
 truth of our religion with a distinctness and 
 emphasis that fifteen hundred years of con- 
 troversy have not sufficed to blur. If to sur- 
 render the more technical language of Ni- 
 csea is to acknowledge that the Apostles' 
 Creed leaves the Divinity of our Lord an open 
 question, then let us cling to the Nicene Creed 
 while the world stands ; for between Arianism 
 and Humanitarianism there is no stopping- 
 place, and between Humanitarianism and 
 Christianity there can be no peace. 
 
 But some parts of the Nicene Creed are 
 confessedly couched in language that is strictly 
 theological, and by the unlearned hard to be 
 understood. Need a formal assent to these 
 propositions be demanded of all Christian 
 people indiscriminately as a condition of com- 
 munion ? Anglicanism says, and always has 
 said, No. If there be any doubt in particular 
 instances as to whether the Apostles' Creed 
 is received in its true sense, then let inquiry 
 be made and instruction given. But let not 
 a humble-minded child of God be turned away 
 
EECONCILIATION. 171 
 
 from the Holy Table because the philosoph- 
 ical and theological bearings of the term " one 
 substance " are not clearly understood. 
 
 In the Church of the Reconciliation no more 
 ought to be demanded of the laity, on the 
 score of theology, than an affirmative answer 
 to the question, " Dost thou believe all the 
 articles of the Christian Faith as contained in 
 the Apostles' Creed ? " 1 and no more ought 
 to be demanded of the clergy than assent to 
 the same articles of faith as they are more ex- 
 actly stated and more fully expanded in the 
 Nicene Creed. 
 
 It may be easily foreseen that this avowal 
 will call forth two sorts of criticism, the one 
 from those who think the concession too little, 
 the other from those who think the latitude 
 too great. " Why make any distinction be- 
 tween the faith of clergy and laity?" asks a 
 friend on the left. " You do not seriously 
 mean that you w 7 ould relinquish the XXXIX 
 Articles ! " exclaims with undisguised horror 
 another friend on the right. Let us deal 
 with one critic at a time. 
 
 A distinction between the theological 
 knowledge required of a clergyman and that 
 required of a layman is reasonable, for the 
 
 1 Booh of Common Prayer, Office of Holy Baptism. 
 
172 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 same reason that a physician is expected to 
 have a more intimate familiarity with the 
 laws of health than his patients have. There 
 are very many interesting analogies between 
 the two healing professions, and those charged 
 with the cure (or care) of bodies have much 
 in common with those charged with the cure 
 of souls. But in no point is the resemblance 
 more suggestive than where it touches this 
 question of doctrinal knowledge. Everybody, 
 educated or uneducated, is bound to have 
 some acquaintance with what we may call 
 practical physiology, the laws of temperance, 
 sleep, and exercise. Without this knowledge 
 he cannot live a healthy life. But a man ex- 
 pects of his physician something more than 
 this. He does not demand that he shall be 
 in general a healthier person than himself, 
 but he does demand that he shall have a 
 clearer insight into the causes of disease, 
 and a greater familiarity with the treatment 
 of it. 
 
 Probably the catholic creed of medicine, 
 namely, such a statement of physiological prin- 
 ciples as all well-educated physicians, the 
 world over, would be willing conjointly to 
 subscribe, bears about the same proportion in 
 point of length to the every-day creed by 
 
RECONCILIATION. 1 73 
 
 which men eat and drink and sleep, that the 
 Nicene bears to the simpler Apostolic formu- 
 lary. We cannot afford to dispense either with 
 the science of the professional, or with the 
 plain knowledge of the non-professional mind. 
 
 Turning now to the other critic, the writer 
 would say in advance that he has personally 
 no quarrel with the contents of the XXXIX 
 Articles. 
 
 Any one who believes the Scriptures to be 
 the Word of God, and who accepts the Primi- 
 tive Creeds and the Episcopate, must be in- 
 deed unreasonable, if with a choice between 
 Bishops Burnet, Beveridge, Browne and 
 Forbes as expounders, 1 he cannot assent to 
 the Articles. 
 
 But the very fact that it has been found 
 necessary under the Anglican System (notice 
 the word is " system" not " principle ") to 
 allow the various standards of interpretation 
 represented by the names just quoted, is in it- 
 self a strong argument against making acqui- 
 escence in so extended a confession of faith a 
 prerequisite of ordination. 2 
 
 1 Not to mention Tract 90, which is now claimed by a not 
 inconsiderable body of Anglican Churchmen as a permissible 
 commentary upon those Articles which it touches. See Dr. 
 Pusey's Eirenicon, Part i. p. 30. 
 2 See Appendix, Note C. 
 
174 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 So long as men continue to use their minds 
 upon the subject of religion, there will always 
 be " systems of theology " and " bodies of 
 divinity." The scientific mind is never con- 
 tented till it has arranged and codified its 
 knowledge. Were the XXXIX Articles to be 
 obliterated to-morrow, men would still be clas- 
 sified as Calvinists, Semi-Calvinists, and Ar- 
 minians, as Lutherans and Zuinglians, as 
 Realists and Nominalists. Not until you 
 have shut up such fountains as the " Summa 
 Theologian " of Aquinas on the one hand, and 
 the "Institutes " of Calvin on the other, can 
 you expect the minds of men to run in wholly 
 new channels of thought. But the question 
 arises, What is the use of a formulary which 
 appears upon its face to present one system of 
 theology, but is practically made to cover 
 three or four ? Can we not do quite as well 
 without it ? Should we not be logically more 
 consistent, and historically more Catholic, 
 were we to return to the old standard of the 
 Nicene Faith, and exact no more, no less, in 
 the way of doctrinal assent from the clergy of 
 the Church, than was exacted fifteen hundred 
 years ago? 
 
 But it may be said that the Nicene Creed, 
 if made the sole standard of orthodoxy, 
 
RECONCILIATION. 175 
 
 would be subject to an even greater latitude 
 of interpretation than the Articles now are. 
 This is unlikely, for the reason that the Ni- 
 cene Creed was not framed with a view to 
 ambiguity. Doubtless there would be in a 
 Church where only this Creed were required, 
 very many schools of thought, more or less 
 divergent ; but certainly no one can pretend 
 that the Nicene Creed leaves the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation in the same plight that 
 the Seventeenth Article leaves the doctrine 
 of " Predestination and Election." Men 
 may hold very irreconcilable views with re- 
 gard to 
 
 "Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 
 and yet subscribe the Article. They cannot 
 hold seriously conflicting views with regard to 
 the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, and sub- 
 scribe the Creed. Now the Incarnation is 
 the fountain-head of Christian truth. If w r e 
 believe that, we are certain to believe much 
 more. A confession that u Jesus Christ is 
 come in the flesh " enforces a recognition of 
 the sad necessity that brought Him here. 
 Faith in Him as our only Saviour flows nat- 
 urally out of our faith in Him as our God. 
 While we are loyal to this dogma, there is 
 no danger from the side of unbelief, nor so 
 
176 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 long as we are also loyal to Holy Scripture is 
 there danger from the side of superstition. 
 
 But a positive advantage that would come 
 from relegating the Articles to their proper 
 place among other similar summaries of the- 
 ological opinion is this : a serious stumbling- 
 block would be taken out of the path of 
 those who cannot approve in principle of so 
 large a body of dogmatic statement. Why, 
 for example, should a valuable man of great 
 attainments in scholarship and piety be de- 
 barred the ministry of the Holy Catholic 
 Church, because, while accepting ex animo 
 the Xicene Creed, he happens to hold to a 
 literal interpretation of our Lord's words, 
 " Swear not at all," and cannot honestly as- 
 sent to "Art, XXXIX. Of a Christian 
 Man's Oath"? 1 
 
 Let the XXXIX Articles have all the 
 respect that is due to their origin and history, 
 and all the authority that attaches to similar 
 symbolic documents of their era. Only let 
 them not continue to be considered, what 
 they have never been in reality, one of the 
 essentials of the Anglican position. 2 
 
 i See Appendix, Xote D. 
 
 2 The writer has left untouched the interesting question as 
 to the present binding authority of the XXXIX Articles upon 
 the clergy of the Protectant Episcopal Church. For light 
 
RECONCILIATION. 177 
 
 III. The Two Sacraments. A marked 
 peculiarity of the Christian religion is the 
 fact that while intensely spiritual in its mo- 
 tives and aims, it does not loose itself wholly 
 from the material world. Socrates bequeathed 
 to his disciples a doctrine, and nothing more. 
 Christ gave His people a doctrine clothed. 
 He linked the inner to the outer world, and 
 asserted His kingship over both. The pen- 
 dulum of philosophy swings ceaselessly be- 
 tween the extreme of spiritualism and the 
 extreme of materialism. A greater than the 
 philosophers brought into the world a religion 
 which is neither a ghost nor a corpse, but a 
 living body dwelt in by a living soul. 
 
 The Two Sacraments of Christ's appoint- 
 ment image forth to the eye His two all-com- 
 prehensive sayings, " Come unto Me," 
 " Abide in Me." The one is the Sacrament 
 of Approach, the other the Sacrament of Con- 
 tinuance. Baptism answers to the grafting 
 of the branch ; Holy Communion to the in- 
 
 upon this point, he would refer the theological reader to the 
 Journals of the early General Conventions. It is a curious 
 fact that during the first sixteen years of our separate exist- 
 ence as a Church, the XXXIX Articles formed no part of the 
 American Book of Common Prayer. Bishop White, even 
 while defending the Articles ( Memoirs^ p. 240), did "not ar- 
 rogate to them perpetuity." 
 12 
 
178 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 flux of the nourishing juices that keep the 
 graft alive. 
 
 Thus the sacraments are a constant safe- 
 guard against the clanger of theologizing in 
 entire forgetfulness that we are in the body 
 and on the earth, a danger which would seem 
 in advance improbable enough, but which 
 history teaches to be real. And conversely 
 it is true that when men have made up their 
 minds that Christianity is only one mode of 
 speculative thought, a philosophy in disguise, 
 their very first step is to disown the sacra- 
 ments. 
 
 But the peculiar claim of the sacraments to 
 rank as pledges of unity is this, that they are 
 among the few undisputed legacies of the 
 Apostolical age. Upon whatever other points 
 Christians may differ, they are agreed that 
 these two simple rites, Baptism and the Sup- 
 per of our Lord, have been in use in the 
 Church since the beginning. Even those 
 who, like the members of the Society of 
 Friends, reject the sacraments altogether, do 
 so upon the ground that Christians have no 
 longer need of such external helps, not upon 
 the ground that the rites themselves are of 
 post-apostolic origin. But without the sacra- 
 ments the Church becomes a phantasm, and 
 
RECONCILIATION. 179 
 
 it is impossible to frame any scheme of recon- 
 ciliation that shall dispense with these insti- 
 tutes of Christ's appointment, or leave the 
 use of them optional with individual believers. 
 The sacramental element is an integral portion 
 of the Church-Idea, and cannot be cut away 
 with safety. But Anglicanism, while per- 
 fectly clear upon this point of the essential 
 character of the sacraments, is not pledged to 
 any particular theory of their operation. As 
 in the matter of the inspiration of the Holy 
 Scriptures, so here, it is the fact, and not the 
 philosophy of the fact, that Anglicanism aims 
 to grasp. Grant first that the sacraments are 
 of perpetual and binding obligation, and sec- 
 ondly that they are channels of blessing to 
 the Church, and the Anglican principle is sat- 
 isfied. A transcendental theory about the 
 way and means whereby the Spirit through 
 Baptism brings us into God's Household, or 
 through Holy Communion feeds us on the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, is not required. 
 
 Hence it would seem to be a hardship for 
 men to be driven into schism, or kept in 
 schism, because their consciences are offended 
 by certain phrases, other than the New Tes- 
 tament formula, employed in the administra- 
 tion of Baptism. Whatever may be our es- 
 
180 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 timate of the importance of sacramental priv- 
 ileges, there can be no question that the 
 validity of Baptism lodges in the act itself, not 
 in the forms of words that may be employed 
 before or after the act. The higher the view 
 we take of the dignity of the sacrament, the 
 clearer does this point become, so that, indeed, 
 the unreasonableness of exacting conformity 
 to one particular devotional formulary of 
 Baptism, as a condition precedent of Church 
 unity, may be said to be parallel to the unrea- 
 sonableness of demanding that any one mode 
 of administering the sacrament, such as im- 
 mersion, trine immersion, aspersion, or affu- 
 sion, shall be held valid, to the exclusion of all 
 others. 
 
 But a far more serious difficulty than this 
 besets the question of the relation of Baptism 
 to Church Unity. It is a tenet of one of the 
 largest and most influential of the Christian 
 denominations of America that little children, 
 unable to speak for themselves, cannot right- 
 fully be made members of the Church in Holy 
 Baptism, or treated during their early years as 
 Christian children. Here is a point of differ- 
 ence which obviously does not admit of com- 
 promise. To blur over the issue is simply to 
 cry peace where there is no such thing. The 
 
RECONCILIATION. 181 
 
 theory that the Church is a community which 
 in great measure propagates itself by Chris- 
 tian marriage, and preserves itself by Chris- 
 tian nurture, cannot possibly be reconciled 
 with the theory that the Church can grow 
 only by adult conversions from an unbelieving 
 world. 1 
 
 It would be clearly unwise to open and 
 discuss in this connection the whole baptismal 
 controversy. Still, it cannot be amiss to call 
 attention to certain misapprehensions some- 
 times entertained, the removal of which may 
 make the way of reconciliation easier. 
 
 The Church in receiving little children to 
 Holy Baptism, does not, as it is often supposed 
 she does, guarantee to them unconditionally 
 the heritages of eternal life. She simply re- 
 ceives them, as our Lord received them, with 
 a blessing. She treats them as members of 
 a pardoned family, pardoned for Christ's sake, 
 and needing to be taught both the happiness 
 and the responsibility of their high privilege. 
 
 1 The writer trusts that he has done the Baptist theology no 
 injustice in these sentences. He does not intend to assert, 
 what is practically untrue (although often alleged), that the 
 Baptist system attaches absolutely no value to Christian nur- 
 ture, but rather that Christian nurture is not in that system 
 the prominent feature, the wholly indispensable constituent, 
 that it is in Anglicanism. 
 
182 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 She says, It cannot be that the lambs alone, 
 of all the Flock, are to be refused the shelter 
 of the Fold. It cannot be that in the School 
 of Christ grown people are the only learners. 
 And so she welcomes the little ones, promises 
 them all the help that love, and care, and ten- 
 derness, and holy discipline can give, and then 
 expects them, w T hen the right time comes, 
 " with their own mouth and consent, openly 
 before the Church " to ratify and confirm 
 what was done for them at the start. In de- 
 fault of such a personal acknowledgment, 
 the privileges of Baptism become practically 
 forfeit and outlawed, for only those who with 
 their own lips have confessed the faith are 
 received to the privileges of communion. 
 
 When the first Napoleon wished to signify 
 his hope and his ambition for his only child, 
 he took him in his arms w T hile yet an infant, 
 and holding him up before the assembled 
 legions of the Old Guard, caused him to be 
 declared and made a member of that veteran 
 corps. There was a profound meaning in 
 the act. Thenceforth the destiny of the baby 
 king was, humanly speaking, determined. He 
 was to be a soldier, as his father had been 
 before him, and from that moment the soldier 
 life was to begin. Play, dress, studies, com- 
 
RECONCILIATION. 183 
 
 panionships, all were to be chosen with this 
 definite future in view. True, the child ap- 
 preciated nothing of the solemnity and import 
 of the ceremony. His eyes and thoughts 
 dwelt only on the burnished arms, the gayly 
 colored trappings, the waving banners. Nev- 
 ertheless, that was a moment of crisis for the 
 little King of Rome. In spite of his uncon- 
 sciousness, a thing was done for him he never 
 wholly could undo. 
 
 The Church, just now likened to a family 
 and a school, has also its resemblance to an 
 army. The leader is invisible, the weapons 
 are not carnal, the campaign is against a spir- 
 itual enemy, and yet the sacramental host is 
 no shadowy, unsubstantial thing, but real. To 
 enroll children in this army is to undertake 
 that from the beginning of their conscious life 
 they shall be taught loyalty, and exercised in 
 the use of arms. Unlike Napoleon's boy, the 
 baptized child may claim the promise of God's 
 blessing on his warfare to the end. 
 
 But the real ground of objection to the 
 Church-membership of little children is to be 
 sought in that view of Christianity which has 
 been already criticised under the name of 
 Puritanism. The issue is between the inclu- 
 sive and the exclusive theories of the nature 
 
184 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 of the Church. If, as the Puritan maintains, 
 only a portion of the human race is salvable, 
 and therefore only certain individual mem- 
 bers of any given community are to be ac- 
 counted subjects of Divine grace, then it is a 
 manifest impiety to assert indiscriminately of 
 all infants brought to Baptism that they are 
 therein made members of Christ, children 
 of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. But the Church-Idea presupposes 
 a whole world redeemed, — not necessarily a 
 whole world finally saved, — rather a whole 
 world put in the w r ay of salvation. We may 
 not presume to anticipate the awards of the 
 Judge. We know not how many or how few 
 are to inherit eternal life. Christ discouraged 
 inquiries upon that head. But this we do 
 know, that forgiveness may be had to-day by 
 all who care to claim it. We come into the 
 world the members of a guilty, but at the 
 same time a pardoned race. To convince us 
 of the guilt, to make us appreciate the pardon, 
 this is the conjoint work of the Spirit and the 
 Bride. 
 
 In a word, the Church treats redemption 
 as a universal fact, and Baptism as a univer- 
 sal privilege. To bring little children to Bap- 
 tism is, in the Church's view, just as reason- 
 
RECONCILIATION. 185 
 
 able and natural a thing as for a man who has 
 been in rebellion to claim for his family as well 
 as for himself the benefits of a published am- 
 nesty. 
 
 When God made His covenant with Abra- 
 ham, and founded the old Jewish Church, He 
 gave an express command that the little chil- 
 dren should be taken into it. Is it a fair in- 
 ference from the silence of the New Testa- 
 ment that under the more generous provis- 
 ion of Christ's better covenant the little chil- 
 dren are to be shut out ? On the contrary, 
 may we not argue that if the Christian Church 
 had been meant to differ from the Jewish in 
 so important a regard, we should have been 
 told so, and that therefore the absence of the 
 prohibition amounts virtually to a positive 
 command ? 
 
 It is a curious circumstance that the oppo- 
 sition to infant Church-membership comes 
 from two sources as diverse and opposite as 
 they well can be. On the one hand it is 
 said, You must not bring up children as 
 Christians, because you have no right to 
 interfere with the spontaneous development 
 of their religious natures. You must wait 
 and let them decide for themselves, as if the 
 question w r ere opened for the first time, 
 
186 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 whether they will choose the religion of the 
 Bible or some other religion. On the other 
 hand it is said, You must not bring up chil- 
 dren as Christians, because they cannot pos- 
 sibly be Christians until they have passed 
 through such religious experiences as are 
 only possible to persons of some maturity 
 of character and knowledge of the world. 
 They must sin consciously, and repent con- 
 sciously, and consciously be justified, before 
 you have any right to call them Christians. 
 But the objection, from whichever side it 
 comes, is amply met by Scripture and by 
 common sense ; Scripture saying in a very 
 positive way, " Train up a child in the way 
 he should go, and when he is old he will not 
 depart from it ; " common sense assuring us 
 that it is vain to say we will not educate our 
 children religiously, since it is quite certain 
 that if we do not educate them into Chris- 
 tianity, we educate them out of it. " Free 
 Religion " can ask no better field for its ma- 
 noeuvres than an unbaptized community. 
 At any rate, one thing is certain : the inclu- 
 sive and the exclusive theories of Church 
 life cannot both be true. They part com- 
 pany at this initial point of Baptism, but 
 their divergence does not end here. If one 
 
RECONCILIATION. 187 
 
 is right, the other is wrong. It is for this 
 nation to choose between the two. 
 
 Turning now from the Sacrament of birth 
 to the Sacrament of nourishment, we have to 
 ask what place the Holy Communion ought 
 to occupy in the Church of the Reconcilia- 
 tion. Certainly no subordinate rank can 
 well be assigned to the only habitual obser- 
 vance our Lord by express command en- 
 joined upon all the faithful. It is a wonder- 
 ful thought that while empires have had 
 time to be born and live and die, and whole 
 civilizations have changed their face, this 
 touching tradition has been kept, that on the 
 night in which He was betrayed, " He took 
 bread, and when He had given thanks, He 
 brake it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, 
 Take, eat, this is My body which is given 
 for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." 
 And this in remembrance of Him have ten 
 thousand times ten thousand and thousands 
 of thousands done during the long tract of 
 years across which we look backward to that 
 night. 
 
 Weighing the fact apart from its religious 
 associations and as a mere phenomenon of 
 history, is it not perfectly marvellous that so 
 slender a plant should have survived the 
 
188 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 
 storms and floods that have swept many an- 
 other seemingly more stoutly rooted growtn 
 from off the earth ? It cannot be matter 
 of surprise that Christians should love to re- 
 gard an observance thus hallowed as being 
 their supreme act of worship. 
 
 In denning the standard of fitness for the 
 Holy Communion, the Anglican principle de- 
 mands a close adherence to the language f 
 Scripture, and a careful avoidance of the two 
 extremes of harshness and laxity. It refuses 
 to fence the Sacrament with the mechan- 
 ical contrivance of the Confessional, a thing 
 unknown to Apostolical times. On the other 
 hand, it guards against degrading the sa- 
 cred feast to the level of a mere sentimental 
 observance, in which any one who feels the 
 momentary impulse may take part. "But 
 let a 'man examine himself, and so let him eat 
 of that bread and drink of that cup" " Draw 
 near, ye who do truly and earnestly repent 
 you of your sins, and are in love and charity 
 with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new 
 life, following the commandments of God, and 
 'walking from henceforth in Sis holy ways ; 
 draw near with faith, and take this holy Sac- 
 rament to your comfort.'' Such are the sim- 
 ple but searching tests of fitness by which 
 
KECONCILIATION. 189 
 
 the Anglican principle is willing to abide. 
 They do not repel from the Lord's Table 
 those whose very humility constitutes their 
 best claim to a place there ; nor yet do they 
 make light of those important requisites — 
 faith, penitence, and charity, — without which 
 no man may worthily partake. 
 
 The Holy Communion ought to be, more 
 than it anywhere is at present, a guarantee 
 of purity of character. The worst deficiency 
 of American religion to-day is the want of a 
 warmer interest in that old-fashioned occu- 
 pation, holy living. There is scarcely a con- 
 gregation in the land in which every one 
 of the Ten Commandments is not literally 
 broken. Give us back something of the 
 " primitive discipline " of which the English 
 Prayer-book says that its restoration is " much 
 to be wished," rather than allow the World 
 utterly to swamp the Church. It were a fa- 
 tal objection to the " inclusive theory " of the 
 Kingdom, could it be proved to involve a 
 universal tolerance of sin. While we guard 
 against the narrowness of the Puritan, and 
 refrain from bringing in our brother guilty in 
 things indifferent, we have need to see to it 
 that we maintain a high standard in things 
 not indifferent, and keep God's pearls for 
 other than the swine. 
 
190 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 IV. The Episcopate as the Key-stone of 
 Governmental Unity. 
 
 The Anglican principle insists upon gov- 
 ernmental unity as an essential condition of 
 oneness in the Church. Let us look at the 
 reasons for this. 
 
 Headship is God's law. Double and triple 
 headed creatures are monsters that exist only 
 in fiction, or, if born, are only born to die. 
 From its fountain in the bosom of the Holy 
 Trinity, this principle of headship flows 
 downward through all the ranges of created 
 life. We find it in the constitution of the 
 Family, recent social theories to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. We find it in the consti- 
 tution of the State, which, when it falls into 
 anarchy, (or headlessness,) ceases to be. We 
 find it in the constitution of the Church, of 
 which God's only Son our Lord is Head. 
 
 But it is asserted that because Christ's 
 Headship of the Church is invisible, there- 
 fore there can be no necessity for govern- 
 mental unity within the Church itself. This 
 is as much as to say that because the gen- 
 eral-in-chief stands apart, withdrawn from 
 the sight of his men, while the battle which 
 he has planned and which he really directs 
 is waging (like Molkte winning Sadowa at 
 
RECONCILIATION. 191 
 
 Berlin), therefore there need be in the ranks 
 no subordination, no harmony of discipline, no 
 one system of control. True, the Head of 
 the Church is invisible, but the army of 
 which He is the Head is not, and if ever any 
 army needed unity, this one does. The en- 
 emy against whom we fight, divided upon 
 almost every other point, is at one in hostil- 
 ity to Christ. Forces that can agree in 
 nothing else, agree in hating the religion of 
 the Cross ; and whenever the cry goes up for 
 an assault on that, they move in unison. 
 We have need of the like wisdom in organ- 
 izing for the defense. 
 
 The writer must be pardoned for recurring 
 so often to this similitude of an army. He 
 has done it for two reasons : first, because 
 army life and its necessities have of late been 
 brought so vividly before the eyes of the peo- 
 ple that any illustration drawn from that 
 quarter is sure to be appreciated ; and sec- 
 ondly, because there is no argument from 
 analogy that has been so lamentably per- 
 verted in the interests of sectarianism as this 
 very one. 
 
 Just as an army, they tell us, is made up 
 of companies, and regiments, and brigades, 
 and divisions, and corps, and just as these 
 
192 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 bodies are of differing sizes and variously as- 
 sorted as to their uniforms and weapons and 
 modes of drill, so the visible Church of 
 Christ on earth is composed of an indefinite 
 number of sects or denominations, all en- 
 gaged in the same warfare, but variously 
 equipped, variously armed, and variously ma- 
 noeuvred. This is a fair statement of the 
 sectarian argument, and as such is familiar to 
 every reader. 
 
 But there is another way of putting the 
 question, which is, to say the least, quite as 
 strong. What army ever won a battle when 
 every division and every regiment and every 
 company carried on the fight each accord- 
 ing to its own discretion ? 
 
 The allied forces at Waterloo were com- 
 posed of English, Dutch, Belgians, Brans- 
 wickers, and Hanoverians, not to mention 
 Blucher and his Prussians. Supposing these 
 various contingents, pleading ignorance of 
 one another's language and habits, had un- 
 dertaken to fight on independent principles, 
 after the guerrilla fashion, — would the tide 
 of battle have turned as it did ? Moreover, 
 the comparison of the various arms of the 
 service, such as the infantry, the cavalry, and 
 the artillery, to sectarian divisions is specially 
 
RECONCILIATION. 193 
 
 defective, for the reason that notwithstanding 
 the great u diversities of administration " and 
 " diversities of operations " that characterize 
 these several branches, one general scheme 
 of polity covers them all ; they are officered 
 upon one and the same principle, and, when 
 massed for any definite purpose, they yield 
 obedience to the same superiors. Indeed, the 
 only difference between an army and a mob 
 lies here, that in the one there is discipline 
 and subordination and concerted action, while 
 in the other Heaven's first law is set at 
 naught. 
 
 Advocates of the sectarian principle would 
 do well to be shy of this army illustration. 
 In their hands the recoil is far more destruc- 
 tive than the discharge. A much better 
 way for them, if they would preserve con- 
 sistency, is to abandon the idea of a visible 
 church altogether, and take refuge in such 
 consolations as individualism can afford. 
 
 The Church may safely admit an almost in- 
 finite variety of ways and methods ; she can 
 allow^ and must allow for differences of char- 
 acter and temperament and taste ; but she 
 insists that this freedom of play is beneficial 
 only in so far as it consists with a recognition 
 of authority and a faithful obedience to law. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 Thus far the argument for governmental 
 unity has been mainly one of analogy, an ap- 
 peal to the mind's native sense of the fitness 
 of things. But this is not the only reliance 
 of the Anglican principle. History has a 
 word to say. 
 
 There exists a form of Church polity which 
 can be traced back, century after century, 
 until we come to the very confines of the 
 Apostolical age. A characteristic feature of 
 this polity is headship. The name of it is 
 the Episcopate. " After we have passed the 
 difficulties of the first century," says Gibbon, 
 " we find the Episcopal government univer- 
 sally established." 1 What "the difficulties 
 of the first century" were, Gibbon fails to 
 state, and whether he referred to difficulties 
 in the Church or difficulties in his own mind 
 does not appear. His testimony to the high 
 antiquity of the Episcopate is chiefly valua- 
 ble, because he cannot possibly be suspected 
 of a bias in favor of the Church. But what- 
 ever Gibbon's " difficulties " may have been, 
 neither he nor any other historian has ever 
 proved that the polity which was universal in 
 
 1 " Nulla Ecclesia sine Episcopo^' he adds, " has been a fact 
 as well as a maxim since the time of Tertullian and Ire- 
 naeus." — Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 557, Anier. Ed. 
 
RECONCILIATION. 195 
 
 the year of grace 100 is another polity than 
 that which was established on the day when 
 Jesus, going up into a mountain, called 
 unto Him whom He would, and " ordained 
 twelve." 
 
 The Episcopate, therefore, has a strong 
 historical presumption in its favor, — a pre- 
 sumption which nine tenths of contemporary 
 Christendom respect, and which must be 
 wholly overthrown before any other form of 
 polity can put forward a reasonable claim to 
 general acceptance. At any rate, it is by the 
 Episcopate, as one of its four cardinal points, 
 that Anglicanism stands or falls. 
 
 The reluctance of the American mind to 
 accept the Episcopate as a basis of reconcilia- 
 tion may be traced to tw^o sources. In the 
 first place, there is an undefined, but very 
 real and very general dislike of the phrase 
 " Apostolical Succession." For some reason 
 or other, the words are associated in people's 
 thoughts with narrowness and bigotry. They 
 are supposed to be the cloak of some strange 
 superstition, bred in the unwholesome air of 
 the dark ages. Opponents of the doctrine 
 represent the advocates of it as ascribing to a 
 Bishop's touch a magical power akin to that 
 which was once thought to reside in the hands 
 
196 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 of royalty. But the writer cannot help think- 
 ing that, after all, the prejudice is more 
 against the phrase than against the thing for 
 which the phrase stands. It is certainly pos- 
 sible for a man to be a staunch upholder of 
 the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession, 
 while at the same time he is without a tinc- 
 ture of superstition or intolerance. 1 Indeed, 
 if there be no such thing as the Apostolical 
 Succession, if the Episcopate have no more 
 claim on our regard than any other form of 
 ecclesiastical polity, then the sooner Angli- 
 cans in America shut their church - doors 
 and burn their prayer-books, the better ; for 
 they are only adding, upon insufficient 
 grounds, one more to the sectarian divisions 
 under which the land groans. But if they 
 have in the Episcopate that which links them 
 by an actual historical connection to the 
 Church of the primitive times, then ought they 
 to thank God and take courage, and do all 
 they can by the removal of misapprehensions 
 and disabilities and needless partition walls 
 
 1 In illustration of this, see a profoundly philosophical sermon 
 by Prof. Archer Butler on Primitive Church Principles not 
 inconsistent with Universal Christian Sympathy. An extract 
 will be found in the Appendix, Note-B. Mr. Haddan's recent 
 work on Apostolical Succession seems to have been conceived 
 in the same spirit. 
 
 I 
 
RECONCILIATION. 197 
 
 of prejudice, to make their inheritance avail- 
 able for the enrichment of the whole scat- 
 tered flock of Christ. 1 
 
 The other source of distrust in the Episco- 
 pate to which reference was made, is this. 
 There is a latent suspicion among Americans 
 that this form of ecclesiastical polity is not in 
 harmony with " the genius of republican in- 
 stitutions." That such a prejudice should 
 exist is by no means surprising ; indeed, the 
 marvel is that under the circumstances the 
 feeling is not stronger. Our grandfathers 
 identified Episcopacy with the British mon- 
 archy, and for the most part were thoroughly 
 persuaded that bishops and kings were in un- 
 holy alliance against human liberty. It takes 
 a long time for feelings of this sort to die. 
 They get into the blood and stay there. 
 But as the people of the country become bet- 
 ter educated, and learn to extend their view 
 of the past beyond the few generations which 
 local tradition covers, they will see that the 
 Episcopate, so far from being pledged to alli- 
 ance with any particular civil polity, possesses 
 a wonderful power of adaptation to all forms 
 of social organization. Certainly no historical 
 scholar will venture to affirm that the Epis- 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note E. 
 
193 THE CHHRCH-IDEA. 
 
 copate has ever, for any extended period, been 
 the willing slave of either imperialism or 
 monarchy. 
 
 It is generally agreed that in the first age 
 of the Church, bishops were chosen by the 
 suffrages of the faithful, and then consecrated 
 to their office and given authority to execute 
 its duties by other bishops who had in times 
 past been similarly empowered. It is thus 
 that the American Episcopate is perpetuated 
 to-day. Our bishops trace their consecration 
 to the Anglican Church, and through the 
 Anglican Church to the Church of the Apos- 
 tolical age ; but they owe their election to 
 the free voice of the people of their respective 
 flocks, and exercise their authority in as strict 
 conformity to constitutional law as a president 
 or a governor. 
 
 It is interesting to observe, as one of the 
 healthy fruits of the republican movement in 
 America, that the Church of England, in this 
 crisis of her destiny, looks across the ocean 
 for an instance of a return to primitive meth- 
 ods in the selection of men for the Episco- 
 pate. 1 There is, indeed, a difference of the- 
 
 1 '• The practice of the Episcopal Church in the United 
 States, and now happily introduced in some of our own 
 Colonial Dioceses, in respect of the election of Bishops, seems 
 
RECONCILIATION. 199 
 
 ory between the Republic and the Church 
 with regard to the origin of authority, but 
 it is not a difference that need provok^ the 
 slightest conflict. We must distinguish be- 
 tween authority and power. All Christian 
 people agree that the Divine Will is the ul- 
 timate source of power. " There is no power 
 but of God." Authority is delegated power. 
 The difference between the Republican and 
 the Church theories turns upon the manner 
 of delegating the power. In the Republic, 
 the authority is conferred by the direct act 
 of the people. In the Church, the people 
 designate the particular person with whom 
 the authority is to be lodged, but the author- 
 ity itself is conferred by those who in their 
 turn received it by transmission from the 
 past. Hence States may be forever spring- 
 ing into existence anew ; but a " new Church " 
 is an impossibility. Now it is evident that 
 these two theories of authority cannot coex- 
 ist either in the State alone, or in the Church 
 alone. But when Church and State are 
 separate, thoughtful friends of their country 
 may think it not unbeneficial to the common 
 
 to approach more nearly than that of any other portion of the 
 Catholic Church to the primitive model described by Cyprian 
 as observed ' fere per universas Provincias.' " — Moberley's 
 Bampton Lectures for 1868, p. 333. 
 
200 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 weal to have the two theories work side by 
 side, each in its own sphere. Perhaps, like 
 centripetal and centrifugal forces, they may 
 serve to keep our social system in true equi- 
 poise. 
 
 And now the argument in behalf of the 
 four cardinal points of the Anglican position 
 is closed. The appeal has been throughout 
 rather to first principles than to historical de- 
 tails. If full information be desired upon 
 such matters as the history of the Primitive 
 Church, the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, 
 and Unitarian controversies, the validity of 
 Anglican Orders, or the Constitution of the 
 American Episcopate, there are books with- 
 out number that contain it all. But there 
 has seemed to be wanting to the literature 
 of this subject a brief and simple exposition 
 of what may be called the philosophy of 
 Church unity, and more especially Church 
 unity in America. This it has been the 
 writer's aim to furnish. 
 
 It remains to touch upon a few points that 
 have thus far passed unnoticed. 
 
 Some readers have perhaps been surprised 
 at not finding uniformity in the mode of con- 
 ducting divine service reckoned among the 
 essentials of unity. The omission has not been 
 
RECONCILIATION. 201 
 
 due to any lack of appreciation of the value of 
 a liturgy. As a Churchman, the writer need 
 scarcely say that in. his own judgment this 
 method of divine service is the only one fit- 
 ted to insure that combination of solemnity, 
 heartiness, devotional richness, and doctrinal 
 fidelity which all Christians will agree ought 
 to characterize the public worship of Al- 
 mighty God. 
 
 Certainly if the Bride of Christ can with- 
 out vainglory boast of her adornments, she 
 must be pardoned for taking an especial 
 pride in that clothing of wrought gold with 
 which the devotion of the centuries has robed 
 her. The Anglican Church is so closely 
 identified in history and in the popular mind 
 with a particular liturgy that she has been 
 not inaptly called " the Church of the 
 Prayer-book." 1 Apart from the usual ar- 
 
 1 The following extract is from a most racy and entertain- 
 ing sermon lately preached by a Congregational clergyman 
 from the text, " Let another man praise thee, not thine own 
 mouth: a stranger, and not thine own lips:^ — "The Episco- 
 copal Church offers for our use the most venerable liturgy in 
 "the English tongue. The devotional treasures of the Roman 
 Catholic Church are embalmed and buried in Latin. But in 
 English there are no lessons, gospels, psalms, collects, confes- 
 sions, thanksgivings, prayers — in one word, no religious 
 form book that can stand a moment in comparison with the 
 Prayer-book of the Episcopal Church in the twofold quality 
 of richness and age. 
 
202 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 guments in behalf of liturgical worship with 
 which every one is familiar, — such as these : 
 that it gives the people a more generous 
 share of the service ; that it insures great 
 comprehensiveness of intercession, and a sys- 
 tematic reading of the Holy Scriptures ; that 
 it protects congregations against crudities of 
 thought, mistakes of feeling, and infelicities 
 of expression on the part of inexperienced or 
 undevout men (arguments all of them which 
 must be allowed some weight), — apart from 
 these considerations, great significance at- 
 
 " The proper name, because truly descriptive, for this 
 Church, would be Church of the Prayer-Book. As is 
 the way with all other Churches, so here, the Church cham- 
 pions and leaders have many wise things to say about the 
 Church and her prerogative. But the pious multitude that 
 frequent her courts are drawn thither mostly by love of the 
 prayers and praises, the litanies and lessons of the Prayer- 
 book. 
 
 " And, brethren of every name, I certify you that you 
 rarely hear in any church a prayer spoken in English that is 
 not indebted to the Prayer-book for some of its choicest 
 periods. 
 
 " And further. I doubt whether life has in store for any of 
 you an uplift so high or downfall so deep, but that you can 
 find company for your soul and fitting words for your lips 
 among the treasures of this Book of Common Prayer." — The 
 Rev. T. K. Beecher, On the Episcopal Church. 
 
 One can imagine the Puritanism of Hooker's time rising 
 from its grave, and exclaiming in dismay to this most undu- 
 tiful of prophets, " I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, 
 behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these three times." 
 
RECONCILIATION. 203 
 
 taches to the simple fact that this method of 
 worship was in universal use throughout the 
 Christian world for at least fourteen hundred 
 years. Extemporaneous public worship is a 
 thing of yesterday as compared with these 
 venerable usages of divine service, w r hich are 
 our inheritance from the earry centuries. 
 
 And yet, strong as is the argument for li- 
 turgical worship upon grounds of expediency 
 and fitness, there are good reasons for not 
 reckoning a strict uniformity in this regard 
 among the first principles of Church unity. 
 It is true that liturgical worship was univer- 
 sal at the earliest date in the history of the 
 Christian Society of which w r e have any au- 
 thentic post - Scriptural record. But it is 
 equally true that the liturgies of that age ex- 
 isted in wonderful variety. Upon this point 
 all scholars are agreed. Indeed, so numerous 
 were the early formularies of worship that 
 they can be distributed into groups and fam- 
 ilies, genera and species, very much as natu- 
 ralists classify animals and plants. Out of 
 four, or perhaps five, primitive liturgies, there 
 seem to have been developed an almost count- 
 less variety of forms, each retaining, it is true, 
 a strong family likeness to the parent stock, 
 and yet each manifesting some marked pecul- 
 
204 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 iarities of its own. Hence among the infant 
 sciences " comparative liturgies " claims a 
 place by the side of comparative philology, 
 and the proper grouping of liturgies is dis- 
 cussed, like the proper grouping of languages, 
 with much ability and earnestness. 1 
 
 But the Anglican system, in requiring con- 
 formity to one, and one only liturgy, is mani- 
 festly at variance with the Anglican prin- 
 ciple ^ which appeals to primitive and catholic 
 usage for terms of unity ; and since the pres- 
 ent writer is engaged in the advocacy of the 
 Anglican principle alone, it is right that he 
 .should confine himself to the demands of 
 that. 
 
 In the Church of the Ee conciliation " the 
 Prayer-book as it is " would doubtless hold 
 its place ; and if that formulary be indeed all i 
 that we who love it claim, there would soon 
 be no competitor in the field. But, mean- 
 while, why might there not be congregations I 
 pledged to the four cardinal points which 
 have been seen to belong to the essence of 
 unity, while yet they worshipped, some of 
 them with a liturgy modified from the pre- 
 
 1 See Freeman's Principles of Divine Service, vol. ii. I 
 part ii. p. 381; also Dr. Xeale's curious Genealogical Tree of\ 
 Liturgies. 
 
RECONCILIATION. 205 
 
 vailing type, and some of them with no lit- 
 urgy at all, provided there were in this latter 
 case a guarantee that in the administration 
 of the two Sacraments the words of Christ 
 Himself should be invariably used ? 
 
 In such an event we certainly should not 
 be further removed from our fellow-Chris- 
 tians of other names than we now are ; on the 
 contrary, we should be much nearer to them. 
 At any rate, the suggestion ought not to be 
 condemned without a hearing. The specta- 
 cle of congregations worshipping in different 
 ways while within the pale of the same 
 church would unquestionably be a novelty; 
 but would it be any more discordant in the 
 eyes of the God and Father of us all, or any 
 more scandalous to the mind of an unbeliev- 
 ing world, than the spectacle which may be 
 seen now of congregations worshipping in 
 different ways, but not within the pale of the 
 same church? Would not the differences 
 of opinion about the way in • which u men 
 ought to worship," that have been troubling 
 Christians for the last three hundred years, 
 be more likely to disappear if we were to 
 draw the line of our charity around the dis- 
 sentients, than they are if we draw that line 
 between these neighbors and ourselves, and 
 
206 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 
 
 then attempt to convert them to our view by 
 talking across the intervening barrier? 
 
 The Church of England, no doubt, aimed 
 to remedy a real evil when at the Reforma- 
 tion she declared, in the Preface to her Com- 
 mon Prayer, that " whereas heretofore there 
 hath been great diversity in saying and. sing- 
 ing in churches within this realm : some fol- 
 lowing Salisbury Use. some Hereford Use, and 
 some the Use of Bangor, some of York^ and 
 some of Lincoln ; now from henceforth all 
 the whole realm shall have but one Use." 
 But the Acts of Uniformity have not been, 
 in the lono; run, a distinguished success : and 
 it is just possible that by a more permissive 
 line of legislation we in America can sooner 
 secure the desired result, — harmony of wor- 
 ship. 1 
 
 1 It is pleasant to be able to cite in this connection that 
 cla.rum et venerabile nomen, the late Bishop of Maine. He 
 says: " The prayers of the Church maintain, in the judgment 
 of mankind, an almost undisputed supremacy, not only for 
 their venerable antiquity in general, but also as models of 
 doctrinal simplicity, majesty, and fervor. There is in them, 
 confessedly, but the very smallest portion of matter which 
 any believer could hesitate to adopt; and the objections of 
 the Puritan writers amaze the present generation. But these 
 forms of worship are by no means essentia! to the existence of 
 that unity which the Episcopate perpetuates. It is perfectly 
 conceivable that the usages of different communions, their 
 extemporaneous devotions, prayer-meetings, classes, and 
 
RECONCILIATION. 207 
 
 Readers of these papers who have no par- 
 ticular sympathy with Anglican ideas and 
 traditions will wonder, perhaps, at the confi- 
 dence with which certain points have been 
 
 whatever might have been held conducive to edification, 
 should all be found in churches administered under one epis- 
 copal system."— Bishop Burgess, in the Bibliotheca Sacra 
 for October, 1863. 
 
 A witness summoned from a very opposite school of thought 
 and practice is the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, the representa- 
 tive man among the English Ritualists. At the late Liverpool 
 Church Congress he " contended for perfect liberty, especially 
 in the framing of short services. In particular, he instanced 
 the case of working men, who were too tired, after their day's 
 work, for regular Even-song : — 
 
 " At such a time a few solemn readings of Holy Scripture 
 — merely a few verses, which they could remember and take 
 away with them, of encouragement, admonition, or warning, 
 as the priest or clergyman might see fit — with perhaps one 
 or two hymns, would be of immense value to them. And he 
 did not see why, if souls could be saved by extempore prayer, 
 they should not have extempore prayer. The question was 
 not satisfying this person or that person ; it was not the carry- 
 ing out of a rigid system, but it was the laying hold of souls 
 for their blessed Lord's sake. If one section of the Church — 
 those who agreed mostly with him — thought that by such 
 occasional services they could best fulfill their duty, let them 
 have them. And if there were others who thought that by 
 extempore prayer, in one form or other, they could best lay 
 hold of their own people, he for one also said, why should 
 they not have them? (Cheers.) 
 
 " Mr. Mackonochie stated that while in Scotland last summer 
 he had been invited to conduct a service in a fisherman's hut 
 on the Presbyterian model. He complied, and so far as he 
 could tell, the poor people entered heartily into the service; 
 it did them good, as it certainly did him. (Loud applause.) " 
 
208 THE CHUECH-1DEA. 
 
 urged as absolutely prerequisite to any genu- 
 ine unity. Churchmen, on the other hand, 
 will many of them wonder far more at the 
 magnitude of the concessions which have 
 been treated as possible. 
 
 To the first class of dissentients the whole 
 argument has been addressed, and there is 
 nothing more to urge. To his brother 
 Churchmen the writer would simply sav, 
 Consider carefully whether any point has 
 been yielded that is really essential to the 
 Anglican position. This is not a question of 
 preferences, but of principles. Unless we are 
 all of us prepared to accommodate ourselves 
 to what are only the preferences of others, at 
 the same time that we ask them to respect our 
 own. the Church of the Reconciliation may 
 as well be given over at once as a lost cause. 
 
 One thing, however, the writer owes it to 
 himself to say. The advocacy or defense of 
 lawlessness has been no part of the purpose 
 of this book. The spirit of insubordination 
 and self-will may raise a storm ; it cannot lull 
 one, — and it must be remembered that we 
 are now in the storm. The love of law is 
 twin-sister to the law of love. " Every 
 fringe," says Mgr. Manning, in his stinging 
 rebuke of English Ritualism, — " every fringe 
 
RECONCILIATION. 209 
 
 in an elaborate cope worn without authority 
 is only a distinct and separate act of private 
 judgment ; the more elaborate, the less Cath- 
 olic ; the nearer the imitation, the further 
 from the submission of faith." 1 The remark 
 applies in all directions ; to those to whom 
 copes are an abomination, and to those who 
 covet copes. The true way to make our 
 Fold catholic is through a generous opening 
 of the gates by the hand of law, not by a 
 promiscuous leaping over the wall at the dic- 
 tate of individual caprice. 
 
 And yet it is perfectly possible for this 
 reverence for law to consist with a passionate 
 longing after a larger measure of practical 
 comprehensiveness than we now see in the 
 Church. The higher a man's Churchman- 
 ship, in the best sense, that is to say, the 
 more exalted the estimate he holds of the dig- 
 nity and value of the Church as the Body of 
 Christ, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 
 the earthly City of God, all the more eager 
 ought he to be to see the ecclesiastical polity 
 made as elastic and as inclusive as the re- 
 quirements of holiness and truth will permit. 
 Vastly more than the two adjectives of po- 
 sition, " high " and " low," have we need to 
 dread the two adjectives of quality, " bitter " 
 
 1 England and Christendom, Introduction, p. lxxxiii. 
 
210 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 and "selfish." By the phrase "a good 
 Churchman," ought to be intended a Church- 
 man who is good ; and a Churchman who 
 is good will love to acknowledge goodness 
 wherever he sees it, and will even go out 
 of his way to find it ; for there is no danger 
 of our compromising our Churchmanship by 
 taking large-hearted, as well as large-minded 
 views upon the great social and religious 
 questions of the day. 
 
 If our whole ambition as Anglicans in 
 America be to continue a small, but emi- 
 nently respectable body of Christians, and to 
 offer a refuge to people of refinement and sen- 
 sibility, who are shocked by the irreverences 
 they are apt to encounter elsewhere ; in a 
 word, if we care to be only a countercheck 
 and not a force in society ; then let us say as 
 much in plain terms, and frankly renounce- 
 any and all claim to Catholicity. We have 
 only, in such a case, to wrap the robe of our 
 dignity about us, and walk quietly along in 
 a seclusion no one will take much trouble to 
 disturb. Thus may we be a Church in name, 
 and a sect in deed. 
 
 But if we aim at something nobler than 
 this, if we would have our Communion be- 
 come national in very truth, — in other words, 
 
RECONCILIATION. 211 
 
 if we would bring the Church of Christ into 
 the closest possible sympathy with the throb- 
 bing, sorrowing, sinning, repenting, aspiring 
 heart of this great people, — then let us press 
 our reasonable claims to be the reconciler of a 
 divided household, not in a spirit of arrogance 
 (which ill befits those whose best possessions 
 have come to them by inheritance), but with 
 affectionate earnestness and an intelligent 
 zeal. We have not, as a Communion, such a 
 monopoly of either piety or learning in this 
 land that we can afford to be contemptuous, 
 even if that temper were ever permissible in 
 a Christian Church. But we have, through 
 the blessing of God, the title-deeds of the 
 old homestead in our hands ; we sit by the 
 hearth-stone of the English-speaking race ; 
 and ought -we to be blamed for thinking that 
 if the family can be gathered anywhere in 
 peace, it must be here ? Nay, when our 
 fellow-Christians tell us that this or that feat- 
 ure of our system is a bar to unity, may we 
 not ask them charitably to consider whether, 
 along with our disadvantages, there be not 
 some advantages not to be found elsewhere, 
 and whether, when the right time comes, it 
 be not just possible that we may have some- 
 thing to contribute towards, as well as some- 
 
212 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 thing to sacrifice for, the Church of the Rec- 
 onciliation ? 
 
 For these reasons it is of the utmost im- 
 portance to have it known that our real dis- 
 tinction as a Church does not lie, as so many 
 seem to suppose it does, in our preference for 
 pointed architecture, and stained glass, and 
 chanted music, and ministerial vestments, 
 but in our faithful — some will have it obsti- 
 nate — adherence to the primitive and Cath- 
 olic standards of unity. 
 
 Moreover, let us give the people to under- 
 stand that we are interested in what interests 
 them. Let ns cultivate the power of adapta- 
 tion to the needs of " all sorts and conditions 
 of men." Let us train our preachers to han- 
 dle living topics, to throw down the gage to 
 contemporary forms of unbelief, rather than 
 busy themselves with cutting off the heads of 
 deceased giants originally slain by men who 
 had the wit to forge their weapons for them- 
 selves. Let us encourage our men of action 
 to head popular movements and direct them, 
 instead of standing daintily aloof, — 
 
 u In impotence of fancied power." 
 
 A rigid, unsympathetic temper on our part 
 will never win America to the Church. We 
 must cause it to be clearlv understood that 
 
RECONCILIATION. 213 
 
 God's Household is large enough and roomy 
 enough for all forms of activity that make 
 for good. The blunders that are conspicu- 
 ous in the popular crusades of our time and 
 country are largely traceable to the want 
 of that wise guidance which the Church 
 might give, if only she had the confidence 
 and love of the nation. We charge much of 
 the current philanthropy of the day with 
 godlessness. But whose fault is it that this 
 philanthropy is godless ? Why, when soci- 
 ety feels with unusual pain the pressure of 
 some especial curse or want, does society look 
 in almost any direction rather than to the 
 Church for help? Some will answer that it 
 is because of a certain perverseness in society 
 itself. This is partly true, but it is not all 
 the truth. We cannot forget that there was 
 once a time when the Church was the recog- 
 nized Mother of beneficence, the almoner of 
 all tender and gentle charity, the hospital 
 and asylum and reformatory of the world, as 
 well as the world's House of Prayer. 
 
 Take the temperance movement for ex- 
 ample. The failure of the movement, in 
 so far as it has failed to rid the community 
 of a frightful curse, has been due to misdirec- 
 tion. A mistake was committed by the friends 
 
214 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 of ** the cause " in supposing that banners and 
 processions and " regalia,'' and all the accesso- 
 ries of secret societies, could accomplish what 
 
 the sacred society founded so long ago in 
 
 j © © 
 
 Palestine could not. 
 
 And now, after some forty years of assidu- 
 ous effort, and after much making and un- 
 
 * © 
 
 making of statute law, men are coming around 
 
 © ' © 
 
 to the persuasion that in the old-fashioned 
 principles of mutual help under temptation, 
 and self-denial for a brother's sake, in short, 
 by putting into practice, each as he has op- 
 portunity, the full Christian law of charity, 
 lies the best hope of the temperance cause. 
 Yet much failure and disappointment might 
 have been saved, had the Church been alive 
 to the popular need, and made herself a faith- 
 ful apostle of the true temperance at the start. 
 Or take another movement which has only 
 just begun, namely, that in behalf of a larger 
 field of activity for women. There is in it 
 much food for easy ridicule. In some of its 
 aspects it is, in truth, what it has been se- 
 verely called, u a revolt against nature." 
 And yet the movement, with all its crudities 
 and immodesties and extravagances, has a 
 
 significance which the Church ought not to 
 © © 
 
 neglect. These restless souls are not restless 
 
RECONCILIATION. 2 15 
 
 wholly without cause ; were it so, they would 
 not win a following. The Church has al- 
 ways been woman's best friend in the past ; 
 it remains to be seen whether the Church 
 cannot help woman now, not only by culti- 
 vating reverence for those forms of suffering 
 and service which are her appointed lot, but 
 also by opening to her avenues of usefulness, 
 which, if less conspicuous than the Platform 
 and the Bar, are not less sure than they of 
 leading to that honor which is the invariable 
 reward to true desert. 
 
 These are but illustrations of the kind of 
 questions which perplex the mind of society. 
 Why is it that the Church of Christ does not 
 grapple with them, and insist on finding an 
 answer ? We come back to the old trouble, 
 Disunion. The Church fails, because the 
 Church is broken. 
 
 But the horizon is not all overcast. There 
 are many tokens of a golden morning near at 
 hand. People's minds are gradually becoming 
 thoroughly awake to the importance of the 
 subject, and this in itself is a great gain. 1 The 
 
 1 Even while these last pages are passing through the press, 
 the writer's attention has been called to a new treatise on this 
 subject from the pen of the Rev. Dorus Clark, D. D., a Con- 
 gregational clerg} 7 man. Dr. Clark writes upon The Oneness 
 of the Christian Chiwch, and nothing could be more pro- 
 
216 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 
 
 first step toward finding a remedy for our 
 ailments is to acknowledge that we are sick. 
 Christendom, with a very querulous voice, is 
 beginning to do just this. Then there is still 
 further encouragement in the fact that all 
 over the world religious thought is concen- 
 
 nounced or vigorous than his exposure of the fallacies of sec- 
 tarianism. Christ intended, he insists, not merely a spiritual 
 fellowship among His followers, but an actual and visible one- 
 ness; a Church unity over and above a Christian unity. 
 
 But from this height of premise Dr. Clark presently falls to 
 what the writer, with the convictions he has already expressed 
 as to the necessity of an historical basis of unity, cannot but 
 regard as a most unsatisfactory conclusion. Dr. Clark sees 
 no hope of Church unity save as it may emerge out of a bet- 
 ter understanding than has ever yet existed among theolo- 
 gians with regard to the right interpretation of the Scriptures. 
 The recent advances in Biblical science warrant, he thinks, 
 the expectation that such a consensus may yet be attained, 
 But it is difficult to see how this conclusion consists with 
 what is said in the earlier part of the same treatise about the 
 folly of expecting Church unity to be brought about by a 
 convention of denominations. How otherwise could it be 
 brought about, when the need of historical continuity has 
 been once repudiated *? Why not rather take the primitive 
 Creeds as the only Biblical consensus necessary, and then make 
 unity actual, as well as ideal, through the Sacraments and 
 the Episcopate ? But while thus dissenting from what seems 
 to him the inconsequence of Dr. Clark's argument, the writer 
 may be permitted to express his warm admiration of The 
 Oneness of the Christian Church, as a bold protest against 
 what has been the too common line of teaching with writers 
 upon American ecclesiastical polity. Among " the signs of 
 the times" in New England, the book claims a conspicuous 
 place. 
 
RECONCILIATION. 217 
 
 trating itself more and more every day upon 
 the Person of our blessed Lord. Believers 
 and unbelievers are alike agitated with the 
 question, What think ye of Christ ? This 
 is a sure precursor of renewed efforts after 
 unity. The more clearly our holy religion is 
 seen to have its centre in Him whose name 
 it bears, the more will those who love Him 
 in sincerity feel that the Church must be 
 one. 
 
 At any rate let us who believe in unity hold 
 fast our faith without wavering, well content 
 to rank as fools and mad so long as we are 
 certain that we have the word of Christ and 
 the example of His first missionaries on our 
 side. For be the waves never so angry, the 
 sky never so dark, the forebodings of disaf- 
 fected friends never so gloomy, if we are con- 
 fident that the ship's head is right, our only 
 duty is to 
 
 " Still bear up, and steer 
 Right onward." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE A, p. 93.— A FOREIGNER'S VIEW OF RELIG- 
 ION IN AMERICA. 
 
 The following extract from an article on the state of 
 religion in this country is as suggestive as it is amusing. 
 The writer is the Rev. Harry Jones, an English clergyman 
 who has lately been passing a vacation here. Mr. Jones 
 is an acute observer, as well as a genial critic, and his 
 " American Notes " are vastly more accurate than certain 
 papers which, under the same title, irritated the national 
 nerves some thirty years ago : — 
 
 " There is no body corresponding to a national Church 
 which admits Catholicity of views among its members. 
 Churches and parties are sharply defined, though, as I 
 have said, among the chief Protestant communities there 
 is some interchange of membership, and ministers fre- 
 quently unite in the prosecution of some common object. 
 But the views of the majority prevail in each church. A 
 congregation of Episcopalians is, I think, throughout the 
 country, more distinctly high or low than with us. In- 
 deed, the word ' parish/ as understood in England, has no 
 meaning in America. It is constantly used, but in a con- 
 gregational, not territorial sense. And there seems to be 
 no real representation of the minority in the government 
 of any Church. The minority must conform or depart. 
 There is practically no historical code or supreme court to 
 which appeal may be made by such as cannot trim their 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 sentiments to any which may possess the current or pre- 
 vailing majority. A margin of a few High or Low Church- 
 men among the Episcopalians can by their votes color the 
 whole government of the Church, and procure the promo- 
 tion of the adherents of their own party alone. One effect, 
 however, of the American system is to promote schism. 
 A party gets preeminence, and keeps the other out of place. 
 And this is a process which accumulates in intensity till 
 the baffled minority breaks off and forms a new community 
 for itself. When that is done, there may be an interchange 
 of some offices between the two bodies, but till then the 
 member of a church who cannot always think according 
 to order is in a somewhat depressed and irritating position. 
 I have been struck with the paucity, if not absence, of * 
 those whom we call ' Broad ; in the American Episcopal 
 Church. I was almost going to say that they were ' no- 
 where ' in that body. And from what I could make out, 
 this apj)lies in some measure to all American religious 
 communities. A man belongs to some party, and that 
 party has a representative ' church,' which holds some 
 friendly relations with others, but expects its own members 
 to think in unison far more than the members of the 
 Church of England do. There is more choice of opinions 
 than individual liberty of judgment. 
 
 " The result of this is a conglomeration of sects which 
 forms the nearest approach to a national Church. Among 
 these there is in the main some informal good understand- 
 ing, but no one would care to claim or allow anything like 
 authoritative preeminence, except of course the Romish 
 Church, which recognizes nothing but itself. Each gov- 
 erns itself; there is no fixed common representative ac- 
 credited body. Some may unite for a passing purpose, 
 but such union is only temporary. The American Church 
 in the largest sense is a congeries of religious republics 
 which have no permanent federation." 
 
220 APPENDIX. 
 
 The following paragraphs, although scarcely relevant to 
 the subject in hand, may do some good : — 
 
 " I confess that I did not like divers of the services in 
 the Episcopal Church which I attended. Any of our 
 brethren in America who may read this must forgive me 
 when I say that I was sometimes struck to the backbone 
 by their coldness. Eespectability seemed to reign supreme. 
 That is, however, an essential feature in American re- 
 ligious gatherings. In church there was frequently but 
 little responding. The choir, consisting generally of la- 
 dies and gentlemen in a gallery, as a rule, sings to the 
 congregation, which listens. Some of the clergy feel this 
 painfully 
 
 " One thing which struck me in almost all the congrega- 
 tions I saw was the large, in some instances very large, 
 proportion of men present. The defect in responding does 
 not, I believe, arise from indifference to the service, but 
 rather from the silence which is a striking feature of 
 American gatherings. Eeligion there is an eminently 
 pressing, nay, sometimes importunate matter of general 
 public concern ; and men do not leave its observances 
 to be attended by what have been called ' bonnets and 
 babies/ The man element is very conspicuous 
 
 " As far as I could understand it, however, generally 
 the style of service in the Episcopal Church was what is 
 sometimes called i high and dry ' with us. Again I re- 
 mark that the coldness I noticed must be attributed more 
 to what appeared to me a national spirit of silence, if not 
 sadness, than to indifference. Ajnericans struck me as 
 naturally preoccupied and reserved ; and their reserve 
 shows itself when they are particularly serious/' 1 
 
 1 From The Guardian of December 22, 1869. 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 NOTE B, p. 196. — " PRIMITIVE CHURCH PRINCI- 
 PLES NOT INCONSISTENT WITH UNIVERSAL 
 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY." 
 
 " Situated as we are in the midst of large bodies of ex- 
 cellent and able men, who reject indeed our ministrations, 
 yet whom we are bound to conciliate to the very last de- 
 gree that involves no surrender of principle ; the public 
 mind around us agitated by unwarrantable representations 
 of the Church's belief as to her ministry ; and those whom 
 we have undertaken to guide anxiously inquiring of us 
 our real claims ; Romanists with some, if we do not 
 rank everything else above our office ; Puritans with oth- 
 ers, if we do not rank our office above everything else, — 
 it is surely fitting that we should furnish ourselves with 
 some definite principles on the question, capable of direct 
 
 and practical application By one party it is 
 
 openly professed that the polity of the Church and minis- 
 try of Christ is entirely a matter of temporary, occasional, 
 variable expediency; that all bodies and all individuals who 
 believe in the name of Jesus are equally contemplated in 
 His original charter, and equally realize His original de- 
 sign. By the other it is usually maintained, with as res- 
 olute a conviction, that the one constitution of the Church 
 and her ministry, being in every element essentially divine, 
 forms the sole exclusive machinery of human salvation ; 
 that to it alone the sanctifying graces of the Gospel are 
 promised; and that there exists no ground in the New 
 Testarnent for anticipating that they can ever travel out 
 of the channel it affords for their transmission. 
 
 " The eager advocates of each of these views are so pos- 
 sessed with the absolute truth of the main principle for 
 which they struggle, as to overlook the enormous difficul- 
 ties that challenge them when they descend to the simple 
 facts of the case ; when the bold theory of the latitudina- 
 
222 APPENDIX. 
 
 rian is met not only by the internal improbability of his 
 supposition, bat by the clear evidence of Scripture and 
 Apostolic antiquity : when the rigorous scheme of his op- 
 ponent is encountered by the overwhelming evidence of 
 daily experience, establishing by the most decisive attesta- 
 tions, by proofs which, if we reject, we must reject all hu- 
 man reasoning on religion, that the purifying and saving 
 graces of the Gospel are not limited, as he would affirm, 
 but extend through almost every community in which the 
 leading doctrines of the faith of Christ are preached. 
 
 " When views thus contradictory and thus extreme are 
 put forth ; when it is certain they cannot both be strictly 
 true ; when both may be made in their degree plausible, 
 and yet facts exist that seem inconsistent with either, — 
 the most valuable service that can be rendered to the pub- 
 lic mind is the work of limitation : the attempt to show 
 under what qualifications principles true in themselves 
 ought to be accepted, so as to make them consistent with 
 others of equal certainty. This is an humble task appar- 
 ently ; but the whole history of human knowledge has 
 shown that it is far from being an easy one in reality. 
 The most important steps in every part of moral science 
 have consisted in this very adjustment of rival troths ; it 
 is much less difficult to see the force of a great principle 
 than to see its limits.''' * 
 
 The above extract has been reprinted chiefly in the hope 
 of attracting the reader to the sermon itself, which will 
 well repay careful study. An American edition of Pro- 
 fessor Butler's Sermons is accessible. 
 
 1 Sermons Doctrinal and Practical. By the Rev. William 
 Archer Butler. M. A. First Series, Serm. XXIV. 
 
APPENDIX. 223 
 
 NOTE C, p. 173. — THE DOCTRINAL COMPREHEN- 
 SIVENESS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 Upon this point the new Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Har- 
 vey Goodwin, has expressed himself in the following 
 hearty and straightforward way : — 
 
 " I acknowledge therefore freely that it is impossible 
 for men, if they think at all, to think exactly in the same 
 way. But then there is such a thing as minimizing dif- 
 ferences, and seeking for points of contact, and sinking 
 smaller distinctions in the united acknowledgment of 
 great foundation truths: and on the other hand, it is pos- 
 sible to stereotype differences which might have been 
 transient, to deepen lines of separation, to exaggerate 
 the importance of controversial distinctions. Let us no- 
 tice what has taken place with regard to those three party 
 names which I have already cited. They were, I believe, 
 made permanent and emphatic in the Church of England, 
 at all events unwonted attention was called to them, by 
 an ingenious article published some years ago in the 
 ' Edinburgh Review/ The writer of that article assumed 
 that the whole of the clergy could be ranged in three 
 classes : he subdivided these classes, so as still further to 
 distinguish the schools of clerical opinion, and then, with 
 an unfortunate ingenuity, he concluded by assorting the 
 whole body of the clergy into his classes and subdivisions. 
 This he contrived to do by first ticketing all those whom 
 he knew personally, and of whose opinions therefore he 
 felt competent to form a judgment; and then, assuming 
 that his own friends were a fair sample of the clergy in 
 general, he had manifestly sufficient data for determining 
 the magnitude of each of the parties into which he was 
 pleased to divide the ministers of the Church. It is obvi- 
 ous that the* process was uncertain and likely to be fal- 
 lacious, but with this I am not now concerned : what I 
 
224 APPENDIX. 
 
 object to is the attempt to perform such a process ; I ob- 
 ject to anv pretense that it is right or possible to divide 
 the ministers of the Church into classes having sharply 
 defined differences ; I object to be so classified myself, and 
 I do not wish that that should be done to others which 
 I regard as an insult and a wrong when done to me. 
 "Why cannot I be a Churchman without any adjective at 
 all, — high as the Church is high, low as the Church is low, 
 broad as the Church is broad ? 
 
 " Moreover, there is this evil arising from the neat tripar- 
 tite classification against which I am making my pro- 
 test, — namely, that people are tempted to assume, and 
 often do assume, that the division is so complete and ex- 
 haustive that if a man does not belong to the first party 
 nor to the second, then he must by logical and inevitable 
 necessity belong to the third. Are you a High Church- 
 man ? No. Are you a Low Churchman ? So. Ada? ! 
 then Broad you must be : and probably he who asks the 
 question finds something unspeakably awful in this alter- 
 native. 
 
 " In truth, the terms High and Low and Broad, when 
 applied to Church principles and opinions, must in the 
 nature of things be metaphorical ; and their meaning is 
 that which the persons who use them choose to assign to 
 them. Their meaning may be good ; it may be much the 
 contrary. For example, I apprehend that frequently the 
 names are taken somewhat in the following manner. It 
 is tacitly assumed that Romanism and Protestant dissent 
 are the opposite poles of a certain line of thought : that 
 High Churchmen tend to the first. Low Churchmen to 
 the second ; so that by* logical necessity a High Church- 
 man, if he be only high enough, will become a Bomanist, 
 and a Low Churchman, if he be only low enough, will 
 sink into some form of Protestant dissent: and if a man's 
 stand-point cannot be found in this line, then it is con- 
 cluded that it must be somewhere upon an infinite plane 
 
APPENDIX. 225 
 
 which crosses it, and in which he may easily be lost alto- 
 gether. Now if this be the way in which the terms of 
 which I am speaking are regarded, — and popularly I be- 
 lieve they frequently are so regarded, — then the result is 
 most mischievous ; each term becomes a term of reproach, 
 and there is only a choice of evils ; for it would seem as 
 if no English Churchman could venture to follow out 
 his principles to their legitimate consequences : a High 
 Churchman is on the way to Rome ; a Low Churchman 
 is on the way to dissent ; and a Broad Churchman is a 
 hopeless wanderer — on the way — I hardly know whither. 
 " This would indeed be a terrible condition of things, but 
 I venture to assert that it is an imaginary one. I assert 
 that it is possible for an English Churchman to be unat- 
 tached to any party, and to be committed to no principle 
 which he may not loyally carry out to its legitimate con- 
 sequences; nay, further, I believe that if the terms be 
 rightly interpreted, every Churchman may be and ought 
 to be at once High and Low and Broad. For a man may 
 hold strong views with regard to that clause in the Creed 
 which speaks of " one Catholic and Apostolic Church ; " 
 he may have been led to form a high estimate of the 
 Church's powers and functions, of her duty in dispensing 
 the Sacraments, of her dignity as the living body of 
 Christ ; and, regarding the Church of England as a mem- 
 ber of this Church Catholic, a man who holds these views 
 may rightly be called a High Churchman, and he will be 
 called so in company with such men as Hooker, and 
 Jeremy Taylor, and George Herbert, and Bull, and 
 Blunt, and Mill. But then a High Churchman of this 
 stamp is by no means pledged to put the Church in a 
 false position by forgetting the Lord who redeemed her, 
 and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies her. True, there was a 
 phase of Churchmanship which seemed to do this ; the 
 dreary Churchmanship of the last century, which identi- 
 fied the Church with the Establishment, and her prosper- 
 15 
 
226 APPENDIX. 
 
 ity with the safety of her tithes, and which reduced her 
 orthodoxy to a feeble and ineffectual morality, — this 
 kind of Churchmanship did seem to belong to a church 
 without a Christ, and to men who had not so much as 
 heard whether there be any Holy Ghost ; and when those 
 doctrines of grace, which were identified with the names 
 of such men as Wesley, and Venn, and Scott, and New- 
 ton, and Simeon, were once more preached, no wonder 
 that they seemed incompatible with High Churchman- 
 ship, and that Low Churchman and Evangelical came to 
 mean the same thing. But I want to know what real an- 
 tagonism there is between the two views ? If it be the 
 creed of the Low Churchman that Jesus Christ must be 
 all in all, that nothing must stand between the sinner and 
 his Saviour, that the influence of the Holy Ghost is 
 needed to sanctify each human soul, and that Christ 
 Himself is greater than His Church, greater than Church 
 ordinances, greater than Church ministers, and that the 
 Church must not be so magnified as to eclipse her Lord, 
 then what is there in this creed which a High Church- 
 man is not bound and willing to hold ? And once more : 
 may not a man hold views which would justify his posi- 
 tion amongst High Churchmen and his position amongst 
 Low Churchmen, and yet not prevent him from sympa- 
 thizing with what may fairly be called Broad Church 
 views ? Of course there is an offensive sense which iden- 
 tifies such views with mere indifference to dogmatic truth, 
 and with these no earnest Churchman can have any sym- 
 pathy ; but surely in a pure and legitimate sense the 
 Church of England is herself broad; she has shrunk from 
 needless definitions; retaining essentials, she has given 
 wide liberty in details ; the very fault that some find with 
 her is this, that she is too broad, too comprehensive, too 
 tolerant, too capable of being made a common house and 
 resting-place for a motley multitude of weary, heavy-laden 
 souls. Yet if it be a fault, one may well believe that it 
 
APPENDIX. 227 
 
 will be gently regarded by Him who said, ' Come unto 
 Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest ; ' and whether fault or not, a man may surely be 
 broad as the Church of England is broad, and be a good 
 Churchman still. 
 
 " Hence I would venture to express a hope that the divis- 
 ions in the Church of England, bad as they are, are not 
 so wide or so deep as they are sometimes supposed to be. 
 Party men no doubt there are amongst us, but there is a 
 large mass of men who own no party leader but Christ, 
 and no party name but His ; I would that any words of 
 mine could increase their number. That men, if they 
 think at all, must upon many subjects think differently, I 
 have already allowed, and I am aware also that at the 
 present time there are causes at work which tend to 
 throw into more than usual prominence the differences 
 between one Christian and another ; but that is all the 
 more reason why we should try to bring together those 
 who can be brought together, why we should shrink from 
 exaggerating points of difference, why we should search 
 for broad grounds of agreement, and endeavor as much 
 as possible to illustrate the grace of charity. 
 
 " Eor while Christians are contending with each other, 
 and the Church is divided, and questions are being keenly 
 discussed, from the color and shape of a vestment up to 
 the highest mysteries of the faith, Satan pursues his work 
 with a terrible unity of purpose, and with all the advan- 
 tages of an undivided command. What might not the 
 Church of England do, if this same unity of practical pur- 
 pose were hers ? What might she not do, what victories 
 might she not gain, if all her children, forgetting their 
 differences, would make a cool, lasting, well-supported at- 
 tack upon the powers of evil under Christ their common 
 Lord ? And if, being of one mind, and knit together in 
 charity, we set ourselves to work to correct what is amiss, 
 to strengthen what is weak, and to reform whatever needs 
 
228 APPENDIX. 
 
 reform in our own government and practice and disci- 
 pline, what might we not hope with regard to the attrac- 
 tive power of the Church upon the various Christian 
 communities round about her ! 
 
 " Is all this chimerical ? Am I as one who beats the 
 air, when I speak of the possibility of healing the divis- 
 ions by which our Church is rent ? It may be so ; but 
 at least I must declare my solemn conviction that the 
 best hopes of Christendom are bound up with the Church 
 of England, and that the best hopes of the Church of Eng- 
 land are to be found in unity. And therefore I would 
 say to you, Christian brethren, who in the course of a few 
 years will have so much influence upon the current of 
 English thought and feeling, and the sight of whom 
 brings back to my mind the remembrance of my own 
 happiest days, — I would say, strive to strengthen and 
 increase this unity ; eschew the spirit of party ; be toler- 
 ant of difference of opinion ; and endeavor to stand upon 
 the broad common ground of allegiance and love to the 
 same Redeemer and membership in the same Church! 
 And so may God be with you ! Amen." 1 
 
 NOTE D, p. 176. — " THE XXXIX ARTICLES " IN THE 
 EAST. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All Eng- 
 land, not long since sent to the Greek Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople a fraternal letter, and together with it a copy 
 of the Book of Common Prayer for his examination. In 
 the Patriarch's reply occurs this remarkable passage : — 
 
 " Having very gratefully received the Sacred Prayer- 
 book of your Anglican Confession, presented to us by 
 
 i From Four Sermons preached before the University of 
 Cambridge, February, 1869. By Harvey Goodwin, D. D., 
 then Dean of Ely. 
 
APPENDIX. 229 
 
 you, we have deferred an answer chiefly on this account, 
 that having more leisurely perused this Ecclesiastical 
 book, we might more accurately ascertain how far it in- 
 clines to or diverges from genuine Evangelical and Catho- 
 lic teaching, and how far it confirms that statement of the 
 Preface (p. 7), that ( it contains nothing contrary to the 
 Word of God and to sound doctrine.' 
 
 " In the mean time, having gladly received the Encyc- 
 lical Epistle published by the Anglican Bishops assembled 
 two years since in England, to which is prefixed the com- 
 mendatory letter of your ever-to-be-remembered Eminence, 
 and perceiving from it that they distinctly confess and 
 affirm, simply and in general, that they hold firmly and 
 immovably the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, and 
 that they maintain the Creeds of one Holy and Apostolic 
 Church, and keep pure and undefiled its ancient order and 
 worship, .... and reject all novelty, and are en- 
 deavoring to publish abroad in all the earth the saving 
 preaching of the Gospel, — perceiving, we say, all this so 
 distinctly and generally affirmed in words, we rejoiced 
 greatly in our soul, suspecting the approach and dawn of 
 the gathering together in one and the same fold of the 
 Lord, and the union of all the spiritual sheep everywhere. 
 
 " But on descending to the particulars of the contents 
 of the Prayer-book, and of the distinguished Confession 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles, contained in it, — since in the 
 perusal of them, both the statements concerning the eter- 
 nal existence of the Holy Spirit and those concerning the 
 Divine Eucharist, and, further, those concerning the num- 
 ber of the Sacraments, concerning Apostolic and Ecclesi- 
 astical Tradition, the authority of the truly genuine Oecu- 
 menical Councils, the position and mutual relations of the 
 Church on earth and that in heaven ; and, moreover, the 
 honor and reverence due from us to those who are, in the- 
 ory and practice, the heroes of the faith, — the adamantine 
 martyrs and athletes, — since, we say, these statements 
 
230 APPENDIX. 
 
 appeared to us to savor too much of novelty ; and that 
 which is said (p. 592, Art. xix.), ' As the Churches of 
 Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the 
 Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and 
 manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith/ de- 
 prives the Eastern Churches of the orthodoxy and perfec- 
 tion of the faith — (let us be permitted to say that accusa- 
 tions of our neighbor are out of place in a distinguished 
 Confession of Faith) — these statements throw us into sus- 
 pense, so that we doubt what we are to judge of the rule 
 of Anglican Orthodoxy. We would therefore pray with 
 our whole soul to the Author and Finisher of our salva- 
 tion, to enlighten the understanding of all with the light 
 of His knowledge, and to make of all nations one speech of 
 the one faith, and of the one love, and of the one hope of 
 the Gospel : that with one mouth and one heart, as merci- 
 ful children of one and the same mother, the Church — the 
 Catholic Church of the first-begotten — we may glorify 
 the Triune God." 1 
 
 "From which it appears," remarks the journalist in 
 whose columns the letter was given to the public, " that the 
 XXXIX Articles are as much a stumbling-block to East- 
 ern Christians as to many Anglicans at home." 
 
 Christian unity among our fellow-countrymen here in 
 America cannot but be a matter of vastly greater moment 
 to us than the revival of fraternal intercourse with foreign 
 Churches. 
 
 Still, it is interesting to catch this voice from the far 
 East, and to gather from it that the same return to first 
 principles which is needed here, would help us there. 
 
 1 Printed in The Guardian of November 10, 1869. The 
 original Greek was given in the following number of the same 
 journal. 
 
APPENDIX. 231 
 
 NOTE E. p. 197. — THE HISTORIC CLAIMS OF THE 
 EPISCOPATES 
 
 "History shows, in the actual working of the Epis- 
 copate, two obvious things. In the first place, the Episco- 
 pate, with its long series of consecrated persons, descend- 
 ing with the centuries, and radiating as the Church 
 spread, has been the great historical bond of the Chris- 
 tian society. We still take for granted and quite under- 
 stand that the Christian religion is — with all allowance 
 for the great variation in its different bodies — yet one 
 and the same religion from the beginning. But if we 
 think of what people might have forecasted at its start, 
 and before its history had run its course, it might not 
 have appeared so natural and probable a thing that it 
 would continue as it has done. Its continuous, unbroken 
 existence, in its substantial and fundamental character 
 unchanged, is a very wonderful fact, simply as a phenom- 
 enon. We have not, it is true, much to boast of in the 
 matter of unity ; but, considering the great and constant 
 forces always at work against it, what we have is remark- 
 able enough: we believe in the Holy Catholic Church; 
 our hearts thrill at the great name of Christendom ; the 
 desire for unity, if it were but possible, is the longing of 
 the best men in their best moments. And as a direct and 
 immediate influence, nothing has so contributed to this 
 sense of fundamental continuity and oneness as the con- 
 tinuous, ever-present Episcopate. Along its threads and 
 net-work the influences have travelled which have kept up 
 this feeling. Along its lines the Church has organized 
 itself, and its main history has run. Other organizations 
 have, more or less successfully, kept up Christianity, but 
 they date from particular times, and belong to particular 
 
 1 From Notes of a Sermon preached by the Rev. R. W. 
 Church, M. A., in Westminster Abbey, at the Consecration of 
 the Bishop of Salisbury, October 28th, 1869. 
 
232 APPENDIX. 
 
 places, or are the fruit of special circumstances. Only 
 this has been everywhere where Christianity has been. 
 Only this belongs peculiarly to Christianity, and has trav- 
 elled round the world with the Creed and the Bible. A 
 Bishop is a representative person, and he represents much 
 more than any local authority : he gathers up into him- 
 self a whole history ; he speaks of a past, speaks of a great 
 company of others like himself, and of widely extended 
 relations ; he is the sign of that which began with the be- 
 ginning, and which never expires — of a line which never 
 wants a man to represent it. In his marked and conspic- 
 uous office, essentially the same in idea all along, reach- 
 ing through different times and widely separated societies, 
 speaking ever of an ancient truth, and of its disciples be- 
 ing one, he was a token, even to those who do not accept 
 his office, of the power of that great cause in which all 
 Christians are interested, of the spread and hold of the 
 faith, that as they have been, so they are ; he could not 
 be where he is but for the victory and power of Christian- 
 ity ; he symbolizes its one purpose and one call. Wherever 
 Episcopacy has been, if now extinguished, it has left its 
 monuments and memorials. Often abused, often disbe- 
 lieved in, sometimes sunk in desperate scandal, it had the 
 power of recovery, of persevering and returning to its 
 type; and it was as impossible to imagine it stopping, 
 come what might, as it was impossible to think of Chris- 
 tianity coming to an end. These ancient lines of Bish- 
 ops, representing an authority whose first steps are lost — 
 not springing from the State, though it might be in every 
 possible degree affected and controlled by it — not spring- 
 ing from the congregation — not springing from private 
 theories or reforms or needs — carried home to the pub- 
 lic mind, as a matter of manifest fact, that men were 
 living and had been for ages in a great public religious 
 society, distinct from all other associations of men, as im- 
 personal as the only thing like it on earth, the State — 
 
APPENDIX. 233 
 
 which might at times reflect individual minds, or the ten- 
 dencies of a period, but which was on the whole and in 
 the long run too vast, too open, too manifold, to be the 
 reflection any more than the work of any man, or any 
 party, or any age. 
 
 "In the next place, the Episcopate was a bond not 
 only in outward aspect, but in faith and purpose and 
 idea. The Episcopate represented the Christianity of 
 history; it represented, further, the Christianity of the 
 general Church, as distinguished from the special views 
 or opinions of particular parties or schools in it Those 
 long lines tied together the Christian body in time ; 
 they were scarcely less a bond connecting the infinite 
 moral and religious differences which there must always 
 be in the body of the Church. The Bishop's office em- 
 bodied and protected the large public idea of religion, 
 the common understanding and belief, which all recog- 
 nized as such, even if they differed from them. In relig- 
 ion, as in morality and politics, there is around what is 
 individual and personal, and wider than all special bodies 
 of opinion, an atmosphere in which all live, a communis 
 sensus of elementary accepted truths, vague perhaps, and 
 seemingly commonplace, and of inferior interest to each 
 man's special views, yet the condition and basis of all. 
 It is, of course, impossible to overestimate the great part 
 played by individual and independent action ; individual 
 zeal for good and hatred of evil, individual charity and 
 love of truth; often troublesome, alarming, dangerous, 
 yet with mistakes and with successes testifying to and ful- 
 filling the great law of improvement, without which all 
 good would perish. All who are in earnest must, of 
 course, see much to condemn, and much with which they 
 can have no sympathy, in many others who are equally in 
 earnest. But we must be blind if we refuse to see in 
 great outbursts and movements of the individual and pri- 
 vate spirit, which we perhaps each of us thoroughly dis- 
 
234 APPENDIX. 
 
 like from our several points of view, — say, in Monasti- 
 cism, in the school theology, in the mendicant orders, in 
 Puritanism, in the various phases of Nonconformity, in 
 the Company of Jesus, in the noble but vain revolt of 
 Jansenism, — much which the world could ill afford to be 
 without. It is difficult to say how much we all owe to 
 every one of these movements, in which men, counting no 
 cost and desiring for themselves no retreat, have given 
 themselves to fulfill some great end, which they, and they 
 alone at first, saw and aimed at. But these great private 
 movements could not fill the compass of human nature. 
 They were partial; and further, they tended to destroy 
 all that they could not assimilate or subdue. Monastic 
 cism and Puritanism would each, if they had had their 
 way, have broken up the Church in the attempt to cleanse 
 it. There is something wider — an ideal of Christian 
 life, a tone of Christian sentiment, a Christian harmony 
 of gifts and powers, a great simple Christian faith, which 
 they could not conceive or reproduce. And of this larger, 
 more generous, yet humbler religious spirit, the Episcopal 
 office was the natural head and bond and symbol. The 
 Bishop was the mouthpiece of a theology which was not 
 that of an order or school, and of which the language was 
 the possession and inheritance of all Christian people, not 
 the technical phraseology of some of them. The great 
 creed, so simple in words, so overwhelming in meaning, 
 of which he was the guardian, belonged at once to cate- 
 chumens and divines, to the child's bedside prayer and to 
 the loftiest worship. Whatever he might be personally, 
 in his office he belonged to the public ; his office was the 
 expression of public belief, public thought, public feeling : 
 private opinion had its range within these limits, and 
 when it became aggressive, as in Monasticism or Puritan- 
 ism, found in that office its natural counterpoise and 
 check. The worship over which he presided was old, and 
 it was for all men ; it spoke in Collects, Psalms, and litur- 
 
APPENDIX. 235 
 
 gical and sacramental forms, which have been in the 
 Church for ages, and of which for the most part no one 
 knows the author; it suited alike the aspiring and the 
 homely ; it was a comfort and shelter for those who loved 
 what is quiet and unpretending, and it kindled and ex- 
 pressed the thoughts of those deeper minds under whose 
 activity old things become new. The Bishop's functions 
 were of public interest and concern : in Confirmation, 
 old and young looked to his laying on of hands as an 
 occasion of deep interest; in Ordination, learned and 
 unlearned gained or lost by the clergy whom he commis- 
 sioned and governed. In all that he did and spoke offi- 
 cially, the idea was uppermost of what was of common 
 interest to all, of what was not of to-day or yesterday, but 
 was born with man or was coeval with Christianity. 
 Others might have deeper things to say : he was there to 
 remind Christians of that one great society which was 
 meant to embrace us all ; of the value of what was com- 
 mon and public and customary ; to bind together old and 
 new, weak and strong ; to witness, amid the restlessness 
 and activity of individual efforts, for something which, 
 with less show, wears better and lasts longer ; something 
 public and common, which requires to be filled up and 
 animated by private conviction and energy, but without 
 which everything private runs the risk of becoming one- 
 sided in idea and narrow in sympathy, and, at last, poor 
 in heart. Such an institution can bear the test of his- 
 tory. Its broad results are before the world : the world 
 can see and judge whether it has been in vain, and whether 
 it is not doing still what it was doing centuries ago. If 
 only it had done what it has done, in keeping the Church 
 together, and in guarding at once Catholic faith and 
 Christian freedom, it would have justified its place." 
 
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